


Unfinished Thomas De-Aging Fic, or, Tiny Thomas and the Curse of the Egyptian Cat

by Alex51324



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Abandoned WIP, Crack, Gen, Tiny Thomas, de-aging fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:14:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25502710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alex51324/pseuds/Alex51324
Summary: After a mishap with a part of Lord Grantham's Egyptian colleciton, Thomas finds himself the victim of a curse.This story isincomplete and abandoned.  I started it back in 2013, and at some point I put part of it up on Tumblr or somewhere.  Fast-forward to 2020, somebody just mentioned how they remembered reading it but couldn't find it anywhere, so I said I'd put it up here.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 143





	Unfinished Thomas De-Aging Fic, or, Tiny Thomas and the Curse of the Egyptian Cat

**Author's Note:**

> Again, I emphasize, this is an abandoned WIP. It's pretty close to being finished, and a few times in the last 7 years I've taken a look at it with an eye to wrapping it up, but since it hasn't happened by now, it probably isn't going to. Since I'm in the middle of another project and posting this on request, I'm not doing any editing or polishing.

Thomas had been dusting his lordship’s Egyptian collection for several hours. It was a time-consuming and largely pointless task—Lord Grantham had lost interest in Egyptology years ago, despite his dogs’ names, and never even looked at the collection anymore—but Thomas didn’t much mind doing it. The objects were not particularly rare or valuable, as such things went, but they were interesting enough. And as a youth, Thomas had been as interested as the next lad in the stream of discoveries coming out of Egypt. Imagining a future as an explorer himself, he’d read any number of news articles and cheap novels about expeditions uncovering grisly mummies and cursed objects.

Not that Lord Grantham had anything _that_ exciting, mind. His collection was mostly scarabs and figurines, with a few cartouches. He didn’t even have a mummy case, much less anything cursed. But that much-younger Thomas would have been over the moon to be allowed to see and handle even such undistinguished trinkets as Lord Grantham had. Thomas had come a long way since then, and no longer dreamed of adventure among the pyramids, but every time he stepped into the Egyptian Room, he remembered, faintly, what it had been like to be young enough to believe that anything was possible.

So, while he cleaned the collection, he allowed himself the luxury of remembering those days, carefully cordoning those memories off from the later events that made them unpleasant to think of. Like the winter he and Alice both came down with measles. He’d been about eight, so she must have been five or six. The quarantine had seemed to last forever—so long that even the thrill of being out of school had lost its appeal. He’d read any number of adventure stories, mostly out loud—Alice couldn’t read yet, and unless she was asleep, she whinged about being bored if he tried to read by himself. But even that had been all right. They’d planned that when they were grown up, and Thomas was an explorer, Alice would go along as his assistant. In the books aimed at slightly older boys, sometimes the explorers had girl assistants. To Thomas’s disgust, those books usually ended up having a bit of a love story to them. But since there was never more than _one_ girl in an exploring party (plus an older and sexless chaperone) having that girl be his sister would ensure that the adventures weren’t interrupted with any soppy stuff.

He missed Alice, when he thought of those days. He didn’t miss her so much when he thought of the older Alice, telling him how he was disgusting and oughtn’t to be around decent people, but he missed the little girl who had looked up to him. 

Sometimes, Thomas nearly wished that they’d never grown up. 

As he tried to push the thought away, Thomas’s bad hand spasmed, and a little statue of a cat, which he had just picked up, slipped from his fingers. “Oh— _blast_ ,” he said, as it tumbled, bounced against the edge of the shelf, and fell to the floor, shattering into a dozen pieces.

#

The Egyptian Room was tucked away in a little-used corner of the house, on the first floor. By the time she got there, Elsie was wishing she’d sent one of the housemaids, instead. Teatime was getting near, and Thomas hadn’t returned yet from dusting Lord Grantham’s collection. She’d noticed how he tended to woolgather when he was working in there. If he missed his tea, he’d be as cross as a hungry bear, and none of them needed that. But she could have sent one of the maids, despite their belief that the Egyptian Room was “creepy” and “full of dead mummies and things.” 

When she entered the room, though, and saw the small boy crouched over a pile of ceramic fragments, she was quite glad that she had come herself.

The boy looked as though he were about six or eight, and was dark-haired, dressed in a perfect replica of an under-butler’s livery—except she had a sinking feeling that it wasn’t a replica at all. When he looked up at her, his eyes were startlingly blue. “Mrs. Hughes,” he said, his lower lip trembling. “I can’t put it back together. I’ve tried and tried, but I just can’t fix it.”

#

To Thomas’s abject horror, he found himself crying, and being hugged by Mrs. Hughes. While crying. It was difficult to say which aspect of the situation was worse.

She didn’t let him go when he said, “I’m perfectly all right, Mrs. Hughes,” either. She held on to him until he actually stopped crying.

“There, there,” she said, handing him a handkerchief and instructing him to “Blow.” “His lordship won’t be so very cross about the cat. Nor Mr. Carson, either.”

Thomas shook his head. That wasn’t what he had been worried about—although he should have been. When he’d regained consciousness, atop the shattered fragments of the cat statue, and realized his predicament, he’d been convinced that if he could only put pieces back together, he’d return to his normal state. Absolutely daft, now that he thought about it—he hadn’t even had any paste to repair it with; he’d only been trying to fit the pieces back together like a puzzle. It would never have worked. 

No, everyone was going to see him like this—reduced to a child. He supposed he ought to be glad that his clothing had been shrunk along with him—toddling downstairs bare-arsed in an oversized shirt would have been far worse. But at the moment, he wasn’t in the mood to count his blessings. 

“What am I going to do now?” he asked, whether to himself or Mrs. Hughes, he wasn’t sure. 

“We’ll think of something,” she said, but Thomas shook his head, tears threatening again.

“I’m going to lose my job for this,” he said. No matter what she thought, his lordship _was_ going to be angry about the cat. Not to mention Carson. Artifacts with intact curses were rare—it had taken the Victorians quite a while to work out how to detect curses without activating them. Consequently, objects with useable, but unused, curses were prized by collectors. The fact that Lord Grantham had not realized that he owned one would not, Thomas thought, be adequate consolation for the fact that he now no longer did. “And that’s not even the least of my worries.” Looking like this, there was no way he’d get another one. And his mum wouldn’t let him go home, no matter how young he looked. Unless maybe she took it as a chance to stop him turning out…the way he had. “I’ve got to find a way to undo this.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Hughes said. “Yes, we will.”

She sounded so confident that Thomas found himself feeling a bit hopeful. “How?”

“Well,” she said, then paused. “You begin by picking up all the pieces of the little cat. I’ll get a box to put them in.” She stood.

“And then what?” Thomas asked skeptically.

“And then…we’ll go on from there.” She nodded firmly, but Thomas could see that she was just as baffled as he was.

#

Hurrying downstairs, Elsie tried to make sense of what she had just seen. She’d heard stories of cursed Egyptian artifacts, of course—everyone had—but she’d never expected to see the effects of one for herself. And while she’d tried to seem as confident as she could, for the benefit of the child, she was far from certain that this could be undone. 

Mr. Carson met her at the bottom of the stairs. “Mrs. Hughes. The rest of us are waiting for you to join us for tea. And Mr. Barrow,” he added, peering up the stairs behind her.

“Yes,” she said. “Ah…I think you’d better tell them to start without us. There’s been a…mishap.”

“What sort of mishap?”

“Do you know anything about a--” she lowered her voice, “ _—curse_ on one of his lordship’s Egyptian geegaws?”

Carson shook his head. “No. No, his lordship personally assured me that there was none of that nonsense in this house.”

“Well, it seems he was mistaken,” Elsie said. 

After a sputtering denial and a brief exchange of words, Mr. Carson agreed to give the others leave to begin their meal, and accompany her back to the Egyptian Room to see for himself. She quickly found a small cardboard box, while Carson was speaking to the others. Collecting the pieces of the cat and packaging them safely may have been as far as she was able to get with a solution to the problem, but she’d often found that after taking the first, practical step, even the biggest problem could look more manageable. 

As they trekked upstairs and across the house, Elsie explained what she knew of the situation. 

“A _child_?” Mr. Carson said. “How old?”

“About six or eight, I think,” she answered.

“Good. Good, then we don’t have to worry about feeding or…hygiene,” Carson said with a delicate shudder.

“No, I shouldn’t think so. And he seems to be himself, more or less.” He’d remembered her name, and had been worried about his job, so he must have his memories of his adult life.

“In this case, I don’t know whether to say that’s a good thing or not,” Carson noted.

Perhaps not, given that Thomas’s adult memories included two years at the Western Front, but Elsie didn’t think that was what Mr. Carson meant. “He’s feeling a bit…fragile,” she said. “So be _nice._ I know you can manage it. We don’t want to frighten him.”

#

Thomas finished piling the fragments of the cat statue onto his handkerchief. For some reason, it had shrunk along with the rest of his clothes, and there wasn’t enough cloth left to fold into a bundle. He sat down on the floor next to it, and waited for Mrs. Hughes to return.

When she did, she brought not just a box, but Mr. Carson. Thomas gulped and jumped to his feet.

Carson looked him up and down, his eyes widening slightly. “Mr. Barrow.”

“Mr. Carson,” Thomas replied, hating how high and childlike his voice sounded.

But Carson’s voice sounded a little funny, too—sort of strangled—as he said, “I see, ah. That we have. A small. Problem.”

“Yes, Mr. Carson.” Thomas would have said it was a _huge_ problem, but it didn’t seem like a good time to argue with Carson.

“How,” Carson said, then paused for a very long time, “did this happen?”

“Well,” Thomas said, trying to think of the most innocent possible explanation. “I was dusting. In here. Like you told me to.”

“Yes,” Carson said, nodding. “And?”

“And I picked up this, er, statue. Or figurine. Of a cat. So that I could dust the shelf where it was sitting.”

“…and?”

“AndthenIdroppedit.”

Thomas would have expected yelling, if not immediate dismissal, but Mr. Carson just turned an alarming shade of purple and said, “Dropped it. I see.”

“That’s how it got…like that,” Thomas explained, indicating the pile of fragments. “Then I passed out, or something, and when I woke up, I was…like this.”

“Did you do _anything_ else? Anything unusual?”

Thomas shook his head. “I picked up all the pieces,” he added, aware even as he said it that it was largely irrelevant.

“Yes, I see,” Carson said. “Very, ah, very good.”

“Let’s put them in the box, shall we?” Mrs. Hughes added.

She seemed a little unrealistically invested in the idea that putting the shards in a box would help matters, but Thomas didn’t have any better ideas. He carefully transferred the larger fragments into the box, which was lined with straw—he’d put the tiniest pieces into the box handkerchief and all, he decided.

But when Thomas picked up the cat’s head, which had separated from the body in one piece, he noticed something he hadn’t before. There was a little roll of paper—or papyrus, he supposed—sticking out of the neck. “I found something,” he said, taking it out. 

Both Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes bent to look at it. 

Thomas tried to unroll the papyrus, but found that it was too brittle. “I don’t think I can get it open without tearing it,” he said.

“Then leave it the way it is,” Mr. Carson said.

“But it might say how to undo it,” Thomas objected.

Mrs. Hughes pointed out, “Even if it does, none of us will be able to read it, will we? It’ll be written in Egyptian.”

Thomas had forgotten about that. “Oh. Yes, of course it would.”

Mr. Carson cleared his throat. “Not to worry,” he said, in what Thomas thought might be meant to be a reassuring way. “A friend of mine, Mr. Pink, is butler to Sir Edmund McGuffin, the noted Egyptologist. We’ll write to him, and ask him to advise us.”

That was something, Thomas thought. Provided he was still here when Carson got his answer. 

“In the meantime,” Carson went on, “we won’t…trouble the ladies with this distressing incident. Perhaps by the time his lordship returns from London, we will have some good news to give him.”

In his alarm, Thomas had forgotten that Lord Grantham had left that morning to spend a few days in London. That gave him a bit of breathing room, at least. “Thank you, Mr. Carson.”

“Yes. Well. Let’s get you back downstairs, before anyone sees you.”

#

Elsie suspected that both Thomas and Mr. Carson would have preferred to keep “the incident” a secret from the rest of the staff as well, but short of confining Thomas to his room and bolting the door, there was no practical way to accomplish that. Thomas lingered in the corridor while Mr. Carson went ahead to explain to the others what had happened, and how it would be handled.

When she suggested that Thomas go in and have his tea before it was all gone, he scowled. “They’re all going to stare at me.” At least _Bates_ wasn’t there—he was in London with his lordship. And not O’Brien, either—she’d left ages ago, and the new lady’s maid was harmless. But everyone else was there, and they’d stare. 

“Yes,” Elsie agreed, “they probably are. You must admit this is an unusual situation. But if you don’t go, you’ll only have them sneaking around trying to get a look at you.”

“I suppose,” Thomas said, looking resigned. He started for the door, then hesitated.

“I’ll go in with you,” she said. “I haven’t had my tea yet, either.”

As they stepped into the servants hall, one of the maids was saying, “Mr. Carson, I don’t know how I’ll sleep in my bed knowing there’s a cursed… _thing_ in the house!”

“The same way you’ve done for the two years you’ve been here, I expect,” Thomas said. As all heads turned to look, he continued, “And at any rate, it isn’t cursed _any more_. Most of them only work once.”

“Thank you, Mr. Barrow,” Carson said. “But it is for precisely that reason that we will not be telling the ladies about this mishap. The Egyptian Room will be kept locked, to ensure that there are no further accidents, and when his lordship returns, he will decide what to tell the ladies.”

Elsie didn’t entirely agree with Mr. Carson’s decision—both her ladyship and Lady Mary had survived worse shocks than hearing that their under-butler had fallen victim to what was, in the scheme of things, a fairly minor curse. But she knew from long experience that one had to pick one’s battles with Mr. Carson.

“Furthermore,” Carson went on, “the matter _will not_ become a subject of gossip within the village. Anyone found discussing the incident outside these walls will be subject to dismissal.”

“Mr. Carson,” Anna said, “What if one of the ladies asks about Mr. Barrow? They might wonder why they haven’t seen him in the dining room or anything. Surely you don’t want us to lie?”

“Of course not,” Carson said. “In that case, you may say with perfect honesty that Mr. Barrow is indisposed.”

“Is he going to stay like that forever?” asked Alfred.

“I certainly hope not,” Carson answered. “Now. Surely you all have tasks to attend to?”

The others scattered. When Elsie moved to sit, Thomas held out her chair for her, as he often did, then climbed, with some difficulty, into his own. Ivy brought in a fresh pot of tea—the other having gone cold—and they applied themselves to eating. There was little conversation, but Thomas was particularly closed-mouthed, only breaking his silence to say, “I’m not a _child_ , Mrs. Patmore,” when the cook brought in a plate of jam sandwiches.

“Of course not,” Mrs. Patmore said. “I just—had a few extra, from the nursery tea. They’re for anyone.”

Thomas snorted. 

#

Thomas spent most of the evening writing an account of “the incident,” as Mr. Carson called it, to be enclosed with Carson’s letter to Mr. Pink. It took a great deal of time, because Thomas wanted to make it as complete as possible—there was no telling what detail would provide Sir Edmund with the key to undoing the curse and changing him back into an adult.

Another reason it took such a long time was that he had a bit of trouble with the pen. He’d used the same one before with no ill-effects, but now it was showing a distinct tendency to blot. More than once, he had to throw a page away and start over. 

It was strangely tiring work, and by the time the upstairs dinner was finished and they started their own meal downstairs, Thomas was nodding over his plate. He yawned several times during the meal, and as soon as the pudding dishes were cleared, Mr. Carson said, “Mr. Barrow, why don’t you go to bed?”

“I’m not tired,” Thomas lied, on instinct. Going to bed early wouldn’t help one bit with making everyone remember that he wasn’t _really_ a child. “I only _look_ like I’m six years old, remember.”

“No one’s saying otherwise,” Mrs. Hughes said. “But you’ve had a rather…eventful day. I’m sure anyone would like an early night after being…cursed.” 

She had a point. And perhaps he did feel a bit sleepy after all—purely as an after-effect of the curse, mind. “Oh, all right,” he sighed, climbing down out of his chair. 

Mrs. Hughes got up, too, saying that she wanted to give him something. Thomas was instantly suspicious.

The “something” turned out to be a pile of clothes. Very small clothes. 

“Herbert left them behind when he moved on,” Mrs. Hughes explained, mentioning a former hall-boy. He’d been tiny when he’d arrived, and had grown a foot in his first few months, probably as a result of being decently fed for the first time in his life. Thomas was still trying to work out if he was being made fun of or not when Mrs. Hughes went on, “They might be a bit big for you, but I’m sure you can take them in.”

That didn’t exactly help him decide, either. “I don’t really need them,” he said, offering the pile back to her. “I’ve got my livery, and I’m sure I won’t be like this for long.” Of course, he’d need something other than his livery if he was sacked while he was still like this. But accepting a hall-boy’s castoffs was humiliating. 

“I certainly hope not,” Mrs. Hughes said, not taking the things back. “But just in case. You might need to clean your livery, or something.”

“Fine,” Thomas said, and added, “Thank you,” just in case she _hadn’t_ been making fun of him. “Good night, Mrs. Hughes.”

“Good night, Mr. Barrow.”

Up in his room, Thomas stuffed the hall-boy’s clothes into the bottom drawer of his bureau. They hadn’t included any pyjamas, so he still had to figure out what to do about _that_. Reluctantly, he decided that one of his adult-sized undershirts was the only practical option. 

Cleaning his teeth was a bit of a challenge, the washbowl being at approximately the height of his head, and Thomas despaired of how he’d manage shaving—until he realized that he wouldn’t have to. 

Taking off his glove—always the last thing he did before going to bed—Thomas realized that there was one more thing he wouldn’t have to worry about. 

The skin of his hand was as unmarked as it had been when he really _was_ six years old.

#

After the rest had all been sent to bed, Elsie took some sherry into Mr. Carson’s pantry, where she found him reading the letter that Thomas had been working on so assiduously all evening, his little brow furrowed in concentration. “That might require an extra stamp,” she noted as she took a seat on the other side of Mr. Carson’s desk.

“Yes, he was quite thorough—there’s even a picture.” He showed it to her, a drawing of the little cat statue, with its parts labeled. 

“I had no idea Mr. Barrow could draw.”

“Nor did I.” Shaking his head, Mr. Carson folded the papers and sealed them in an envelope before taking up his glass. “To the end of a long, strange day.”

Elsie drank to that, though she suspected tomorrow would be just as long, and perhaps even stranger, given that they’d be dealing with a transformed Thomas Barrow for the whole of it. “How long do you expect it’ll take, to get a result?” she asked. Thomas, she thought, was being overly optimistic to think that he’d be returned to normal before requiring a change of clothing. 

“I’m sure I’ll hear back from Mr. Pink within a few days,” Carson answered. “But as for how much help it will be….” He shook his head. “I doubt that Sir Edmund will have a quick solution at his fingertips. He _may_ be interested enough, or generous enough, to look into the problem for us.”

“If not, I’m sure Lord Grantham will know of someone else we can ask,” Elsie said. 

“Yes. But I’d like to have made _some_ progress on the situation by the time he returns,” Mr. Carson admitted. “Given his partiality towards Mr. Barrow, I can’t imagine he’ll be pleased.”

“We do have the better part of a year until the cricket match,” Elsie observed. Carson had professed himself mystified as to why his lordship had insisted on keeping Thomas on after the incident with James in the night-time, but Elsie suspected he was discounting the importance of the cricket motive.

Carson shook his head again. “What a thing to have happen. I’m glad it wasn’t me.”

#

The next morning, Thomas came downstairs determined to do as much of his job as possible…while staying out of sight of the family. He had to agree with Mr. Carson about that, though for different reasons. Lady Mary, he suspected, would find his predicament _funny_. He didn’t want to parade himself as a spectacle for her amusement, but he wanted even less for the household to get the idea that they could get along just fine without an under-butler. 

So what he needed to do was make himself as indispensable as possible, while not letting any of the upstairs lot see him. The importance of doing so became clear when Mr. Carson assigned Alfred and Jimmy their morning tasks—which included several of the things Thomas would ordinarily have done. “Do you have anything in mind for me, Mr. Carson?” he asked, ignoring the way two maids tittered at the sound of his voice.

“Ah,” Carson said. “Yes, Mr. Barrow. I’m not entirely sure--”

“Because if you didn’t,” he went on doggedly, “I thought I might get a start on cleaning the workings of the clocks.” He was, after all, the household’s clock expert—and he’d started learning about them when he was the age he appeared to be now. “It’s down for next month, but it never hurts to get ahead, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t,” Carson said carefully. “But remember, we decided it’s best for you not to appear upstairs, until you’ve…quite recovered.”

“I remember. I can do them down here—except for the long-case clocks, of course—Alfred and James can spare a moment to bring them down.”

“I’m sure we can,” said Alfred.

“Ah. Very good,” Carson said. “If you’re quire sure you won’t be overextending yourself.”

“I’m not actually _ill_ , am I?” Thomas asked. “I’ll start with the one from the small library, if no one’s in there,” he told Alfred.

After breakfast had finished, Thomas colonized one end of the servants’ hall table, spreading out all of his clock-repair tools to make sure no one could miss that he was doing complex, highly technical work. He remained busy as a bee all morning, pausing only briefly for lunch, and returned to his self-appointed task while Jimmy, Alfred, and several of the maids were still treating themselves to an after-lunch natter.

Thomas managed to ignore their chatter, until Jimmy’s voice rose above the rest. “—I’m just saying, when I worked for Lady Anstruther, as long as we were ready to resume our duties next day, it was our own business when we got back. None of this curfew nonsense.”

Despite everything, Thomas still found that anything Jimmy said drew his attention like a magnet. It was easy to figure out what Jimmy was talking about—some of the younger staff had been given permission to attend a village dance in a few days’ time, provided they came and went in a group and returned by midnight. Thomas went on listening as Alfred answered, “Try telling that to Mr. Carson. Just let me know when—I’d like to watch.”

“At least you lot get to _go_ ,” said Ivy, who was putting the crockery back on the shelf. “Mrs. Patmore said she’s let me out when it’s not my half-day too many times already.”

“It’s barely worth going, considering how early we’ll have to leave,” Alfred said, looking up at her like a dog after a bone.

“Then why don’t you stay home?” Jimmy asked. “I’ll have all the girls to meself.”

“How much will we really miss?” asked Susan, a new housemaid from London. “It’s meant to be the Young Farmers’ Dance. They have to be up at dawn for…cows and things, don’t they?”

“You have a lot to learn about rustic entertainments,” said Jimmy. “It’s the one time a year they have any fun. They stay up straight through and stumble home when it’s time for milking. And we’ve got to leave at midnight, like flipping Cinderella.”

Lucy, the other housemaid present, leaned forward and added in a confidential tone, “It’s Jimmy’s fault we’ve got to be back so early. Last year he almost missed breakfast.”

“Walkin’ a girl home, were you?” Susan asked, in a knowing tone. 

Jimmy winked. 

Sometimes Thomas was absolutely _shocked_ by the way the younger generation carried on. Before the war, a housemaid would have had no idea what else might go on when walking a girl home—or at least would never have let on if she did. “That’s enough out of you lot,” he said sternly. “Unless you don’t want to go at all.” Unfortunately, the effect was rather spoiled by his childlike voice.

The two housemaids giggled. “I’m sorry, Mr. Barrow,” Lucy said, struggling to control herself.

“She forgot you’re too young to hear talk like that,” Susan added, and with that, Lucy was completely undone, collapsing onto the table and howling with laughter.

Before Thomas could decide how to react, Mrs. Hughes came in. “What is all this commotion? They’ll hear you upstairs if you don’t quiet down.”

That sobered the two girls up. “We’re sorry, Mrs. Hughes,” Susan said contritely. 

“You should be,” Thomas muttered under his breath, lighting a cigarette. 

“Ah,” Alfred said. “Should you really be doing that, Mr. Barrow?”

“Don’t you start,” Thomas said crossly. He and Alfred had been getting on fairly well since O’Brien had left, but Alfred was always on thin ice, as far as he was concerned.

“No, really,” Alfred said, craning his neck to look at Mrs. Hughes. “It’ll stunt his growth.”

Lucy stuffed her handkerchief in her mouth to keep from laughing. 

“It will not,” Thomas said.

Mrs. Hughes added, “We have every expectation that Mr. Barrow will be returned to normal before long.”

“But what if he isn’t?” Alfred asked. 

It he wasn’t, then stunting his growth would be the least of his worries. “I will be,” Thomas said. 

“Speaking of Mr. Barrow, is he the only one who still works here?” Mrs. Hughes asked. “No? Then get on with it.”

#

As she went on with her afternoon’s work, Elsie’s mind kept returning to the question Alfred had asked: what if Thomas _wasn’t_ returned to normal? Presumably, he wouldn’t be stuck as a six-year-old forever—in a year’s time he’d be seven, and then eight, and so on in the normal way. But it wasn’t as though he could go on working as under-butler while he grew up again. The little display in the servants’ hall showed that he would hardly be able to command the respect due to the role.

And Elsie could hardly blame Alice and Susan for feeling as they did, though she certainly did expect them to keep a tighter rein on their reactions. She herself had to suppress a constant temptation to pinch Thomas’s cheeks, and she’d barely been able to keep from smiling at the sight of him, kneeling on his chair again, working industriously on a mantle-clock that was nearly as big as he was. 

She found a moment between tea and dinner to stop by Mr. Carson’s pantry. “Mr. Barrow’s coming along nicely with the clocks,” she observed.

“I saw. Goodness knows what I’ll find for him to do tomorrow.”

Elsie was about to raise the question of the longer-term future, but Thomas himself interrupted. “Mr. Carson,” he said. “I’ve finished with the clocks. I just wondered if you’d heard anything from Mr. Pink or Sir Edmund yet?”

“The letter only went off this morning,” Carson reminded him. “I doubt he’s even gotten it yet.”

“Oh,” Thomas said. “Funny, it seems like it’s been longer.”

“Yes, well,” Mr. Carson said. 

“Perhaps you’ve been working a bit too hard,” Mrs. Hughes suggested. She didn’t think it was quite right for a six-year-old to put in a full day’s work—it was like something out of Dickens. Even if he was really thirty-four. 

“I’m fine,” Thomas said. “Thank you.”

“Perhaps tomorrow you should go for a walk,” she added. “Get some fresh air and sunshine.”

“We don’t want anyone to _see_ him,” Mr. Carson pointed out. “But you could take a bit of time and…I don’t know….”

“ _Play_?” Thomas asked sarcastically. “Why does everyone have so much trouble remembering that I’m not really a child?” he complained, in a tone that was almost a whine. 

Then he stamped his foot.

Over his head, Elsie and Mr. Carson exchanged looks of horror. _“Overtired_ ,” Elsie mouthed, as Carson seemed to be preparing an indignant reply.

At about the same time, Thomas seemed to realize what he had done. “I’m sorry, Mr. Carson, Mrs. Hughes. I don’t know what came over me.”

“Perhaps you’re hungry,” Elsie suggested tactfully. “I seem to remember that small people need to eat more often than…larger ones.” If Thomas had an early supper, they might even manage to send him to bed early. “Why don’t we see what Mrs. Patmore has to spare, hm?” Putting her hand on Thomas’s back, she guided him out of Carson’s pantry.

#

Thomas yawned, for the third or fourth time, as he mopped up the last bit of egg yolk with a corner of toast. Mrs. Hughes had brought him into her parlour to eat, and sat across the little table from him, watching like he was some kind of zoo exhibit. “I’m all right, Mrs. Hughes,” he said, also for the third or fourth time.

“Of course,” she said. “But you seem a bit tired.”

He couldn’t really deny it. He’d felt all right just a short while ago, but tiredness had hit him all at once, like a gust of wind, and now he could barely keep his eyes open. “I might have a bit of a headache,” he said, which was also not entirely untrue. “Squinting over clocks all day. Used to happen to Dad, too.”

“Well then, perhaps you’d like to go to bed early. Get a good rest.”

Thomas had a feeling she’d been trying to work her way around to that for a while, but was too tired to care. “Perhaps I will.” Climbing down out of his chair, he said, “Thank you for the toast, and tell Mrs. Patmore thanks for the egg.”

“I will.” 

He trudged up the stairs, threw off his clothes, and climbed into bed.

Then he got out of bed again, because if he didn’t hang his livery up properly, it would crease, and he couldn’t go around looking _rumpled_. No one would take him seriously.

Not that they did anyway. But still. He hung his trousers and jacket over the chair—he’d discovered last night that the hooks where he usually put them were too high for him to reach—and shook out his shirt. It was looking a little worse for wear. Definitely time for a fresh one, except that he didn’t have any others that fit. 

Thomas thought of the bottom drawer of his bureau—but Herbert’s old ones wouldn’t work with his livery. 

What he really ought to do was wash it out in the bathroom, then take it down and press it. He was far too tired for all that rigmarole. 

The shirt would be all right for one more day, he decided. _Tomorrow_ evening, he’d wash it. 

Climbing back into bed, he fell asleep almost before he turned out the light.

#

After seeing Thomas off to bed, Elsie fixed some more toast and another pot of tea and set off to the top of the house to do what she ought to have done yesterday: consult the nanny.

She let herself into the day nursery without knocking—Nanny Bunn was _quite_ firm on the subject of knocking when the children were napping, as several maids had learned, and Elsie didn’t think she would like it any more when they were, presumably, in bed for the night. 

The nanny was sitting by the day nursery fire, reading a magazine. “I thought you might like a cup of tea,” Elsie said. 

“Did you, now,” Nanny said.

Elsie sat the tray down on the table. “I suppose you’ve heard about what happened to Mr. Barrow?” Nanny took all of her meals with the children, but she did visit the servants’ hall on occasion. 

“I did, and if you think I’m having him up here, you’re mad.”

“Of course not,” Elsie said.

“Because it never works when they’re that far apart in age,” Nanny went on. “The older one always makes a ruckus when Baby’s napping— _particularly_ if it’s a boy.” 

“Yes, I understand.”

“And it wouldn’t be right, him being a servant.”

“No, not at all,” Elsie managed to say. “But I hoped you might be able to help with some _advice_ , given that you are the expert on children.”

The flattery had the desired effect. “Oh, well, I suppose I could…what did you want to know?”

“Well…do they nap, at that age? He seems to be about six.”

“Not usually, but I make mine lie down for a bit of a rest in the afternoon if they get whingey….”

After a detailed discussion of bedtimes, diet, and the importance of Fresh Air (something Nanny Bunn seemed to be a bit of a crank about, in Elsie’s opinion), Elsie made her way back downstairs. She didn’t get a chance to talk to Mr. Carson again until after the servants’ dinner. Coming into her parlour for a drop of sherry, he said, “It seems that Mr. Barrow is not quite so much himself as originally thought.”

“I expect he was tired, the poor wee creature,” Elsie said. “I’ve been speaking with Mrs. Bunn, and apparently we ought to be sending him to bed much earlier.”

“We have been,” Mr. Carson pointed out. 

“Earlier than that. She suggested six o’clock.”

“Really?”

“Seven, at the latest, she said. And she doesn’t think much of our keeping him indoors all the time, either. Apparently children develop weak chests if they’re not exposed to fresh air.”

“I should hope he won’t be like this long enough for that to be a concern.”

That gave Elsie the opportunity to raise the question that had been preying on her mind. “But what if he is?”

“After his lordship returns, it won’t be necessary to keep what’s happened a secret. He can go out in the yard.”

“I meant in the longer term,” Elsie clarified. “What if…he can’t be changed back? If he has to grow up again?”

Carson considered that possibility with an expression of horror. “He couldn’t stay here.” 

“I know that. But what will we _do_?”

“Surely he has a family.”

“Not that would take him in, I don’t think,” she said. He’d said as much, when they’d talked about the scandal last year.

“Then he’d have to be placed out.” 

She let out a sudden, involuntary sound of dismay.

“His lordship or Mr. Branson might know of someone on the estate willing to take him in. If not, I understand the children’s homes are much better than they once were.”

“Yes, but….” She shook her head. 

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Mr. Carson added. “It may well be that there is a simple solution to this…problem. But I _will_ need to find some way of occupying him for the next few days.”

#

Going to bed early had done wonders for Thomas. He woke the next morning alert and eager to begin the day. His exhaustion and ill temper last night _must_ have been some lingering effect of the transformation. Today he would show that he was just as reliable as his adult self. If not more so.

He dressed, gave his livery a quick brushing, and went downstairs. No sooner had he sat down then Mrs. Patmore came in and put a soft-boiled egg and a glass of milk in front of him. 

“What’s this?” he asked. 

“It’s an egg,” she explained. 

“I know that.”

“Then why did you ask?” Shaking her head, the cook left the servants’ hall.

A quick glance around the table proved that everyone else was eating the usual porridge and toast. Apparently, someone was under the impression that he needed special food, because he was small or something.

He briefly considered demanding to be given the same breakfast as everyone else, then realized that if he _were_ his usual size, he’d not be looking a gift egg in the mouth. He’d eat it, then—as long as no one made any remarks suggesting he needed it to _grow_ , or anything ridiculous like that.

No one did. Fortunately. When Ivy came around with porridge, she also put a small dish of stewed fruit in front of him. “Can I get some tea, when you have a minute?” Thomas asked pointedly. 

Ivy looked over at Mrs. Hughes. Mrs. Hughes hesitated.

“Did you tell her not to give me tea?” Thomas demanded.

“It isn’t particularly good for you,” she said. “I spoke to Mrs. Bunn, and—”

Until just this moment, Thomas had thought that he liked Mrs. Hughes. Now it was revealed that she was a traitor. “The _nanny_? The _babies’ nanny_? You were speaking to her about _me_?” 

“ _Mr. Barrow_ ,” Carson said. 

Thomas realized abruptly that he’d been shouting. After taking a few deep breaths, he continued in a calm tone, “I don’t think that entirely appropriate, Mrs. Hughes. I am not a child.”

Somewhere down the table, a maid, said under her breath, “If he was, he’d be on his way to a spanking.”

“Sshh!” said another of the maids. 

“This is not a subject for humor,” Carson said, looking at them. Returning his attention to Thomas, he added, “Nor is it a subject for—shouting. Ivy, bring Mr. Barrow a cup of tea. I’m sure he was drinking it when he really was six.”

“Thank you, Ivy,” Thomas said pointedly.

Once she’d gone, Mrs. Hughes said, in a voice pitched not to extend much further down the table than himself and Mr. Carson, “According to Mrs. Bunn, the latest medical opinion is that tea is too stimulating for children. It makes them nervous…and irritable.”

She added the last with a glance at Thomas, who decided that denying that he was irritable would not help matters at all. “I suppose she said to give me this lot, too,” he said instead, gesturing at the milk, eggshell, and fruit.

“As a matter of fact, she did.”

“I don’t see what business it is of hers,” Thomas said. 

“I wanted to make sure that you have what you need while you’re…like this. I’m sorry if you don’t like it.”

“I’m not going to be like this for long.” If he was going to have any chance of hanging on to his job, he had to make sure everyone knew that this was a temporary situation. “And I’m not really a child, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Physically, you are,” Mrs. Hughes pointed out. “For now.” 

“I’ll be fine.” 

“I’m sure you will.”

After breakfast, Mr. Carson set Thomas up in the butler’s pantry with some silver to polish. It was the third-best set, stuff that wasn’t used very often. Thomas supposed it _did_ need to be done once in a while, but he had a sneaking suspicion that he had been asked to do it precisely because it _wasn’t_ important. Like they thought he was unreliable, or something. 

He’d just have to get it all done, efficiently and without any mistakes. That would show them.

#

“Do you still think he’s just tired?” Mr. Carson asked Elsie a bit later, after the upstairs breakfast was finished and they had started the maids and footmen on their respective tasks.

She shook her head. Thomas _was_ getting worse, there was no doubt about that now. The old Thomas—the adult Thomas—might have resented her interference, but he wouldn’t have thrown a temper tantrum about it at the breakfast table. 

“If he continues to…regress, it won’t be possible to keep humoring him.”

“I know,” she said. The trouble was that Thomas would not take it at all well, if anyone suggested that he was becoming a child in mind as well as in body. “For now, we just have to keep watch over him, keep him occupied. If there are any more…changes, we’ll decide how to deal with them.”

#

Since they were down an under-butler, Carson took on the duty of serving luncheon, leaving the footmen to their other tasks. It was just her ladyship and Lady Mary that morning—Lady Edith was away, as she so often was lately, and Mr. Branson had said he’d be having lunch in a pub. 

“I’m a bit surprised to see you, Carson,” Lady Mary said. “We usually get Barrow when it’s just the two of us.”

He’d been dreading the moment when one of them would ask about Mr. Barrow. While he was sure that it was only proper to give his lordship the news first, he was deeply reluctant to tell a lie, even a lie of omission, to his ladies. “Mr. Barrow is indisposed,” he said.

“Have you sent for Doctor Clarkson?” Lady Grantham asked.

“No, my lady. I didn’t think it necessary.” The situation was quite outside Dr. Clarkson’s area of expertise.

“Well, I hope he’s better soon,” her ladyship said.

“So do I, my lady,” Carson said, with perfect honesty. 

#

Thomas had been polishing silver—or rather, alternating between polishing silver, looking out the window, and musing on how unfair life was—for what seemed like several years when Mrs. Hughes came in. “It’s nearly time for lunch,” she said, looking over the worktable.

The pieces that he’d finished polishing were to his right, and the ones that still needed to be done to his left. The collection to his right was scantier than it should have been—much scantier. Even though the time seemed to drag, he was getting a lot less done. “Oh,” he said, getting down from his chair. “I’d better wash my hands.”

Mrs. Hughes withdrew with a nod and a smile, leaving the door ajar behind her.

He managed to behave normally during lunch. It may have helped that no one brought him any special food, or made any personal remarks, but Thomas decided that still counted. Several people did look at him, then at Mrs. Hughes, when he lit up his after-lunch cigarette, but they didn’t actually _say_ anything, so Thomas held on to his temper.

Afterwards, he went back to the pantry, resolved to stay focused on his work—and he did, for at least half an hour. Then Mr. Carson came in and explained that he was going down to the village for a few things. “James is minding the telephone and the front door. You carry on here, and ask Mrs. Hughes if you need anything.”

Ask Mrs. Hughes. Hah. What could he possibly need? He had enough silver polish and rags to last him the rest of his life. He might have needed something interesting to do, but he wasn’t going to get _that_ , no matter who he asked. No, he’d be stuck here doing work that was beneath him, just because he was _small_ —

Suddenly, Thomas had a terrific idea. 

Polishing acres of silver wouldn’t show Mr. Carson and the rest of them how fit he was to continue with his under-butler duties. No, the only thing that would show _that_ was carrying on with his regular duties. And doing them better than ever before. 

Of course, not being allowed to go upstairs was a significant handicap. Thomas had to think hard to come up with something under-butlery that he could do downstairs. Finally he settled on planning the table setting for tonight’s dinner—he’d decide what china, silver, and glassware to use, and make a list and a diagram for the footmen to follow.

Mr. Carson would be _so surprised_.

#

In Mr. Carson’s absence, Elsie kept watch over Thomas, trying not to be too obvious about it. She brought some of her work to the servants’ hall table, and sat where she could see the butler’s pantry door, so she would know if Thomas tried to go anywhere. She also made sure to walk by every so often, on some excuse or other, and glance inside. Finally, she kept an ear out for any crashes or other ominous sounds.

So far, everything had been quiet, but when the time came to go upstairs to discuss the household accounts with her ladyship, Mr. Carson had not yet returned. Elsie didn’t feel quite comfortable leaving him unsupervised—but it didn’t feel entirely right to ask one of the maids to mind him, either. Not yet, at least. 

She settled on asking Mrs. Patmore to keep an ear out. After speaking to the cook, she stopped in the butler’s pantry. Thomas was sitting at Mr. Carson’s desk, working intently on something. He barely looked up when she told him where she was going. “If you need anything, ask Mrs. Patmore,” she told him.

“Yes, Mrs. Hughes.”

As she started upstairs, it occurred to Elsie to wonder what Thomas was doing, and if it was something Mr. Carson had asked him to do. But it didn’t really matter, she decided—as long as he was quietly and safely occupied.

#

By the time Thomas had finished his table-setting plan, Mr. Carson still hadn’t returned. Waiting, Thomas decided to add a few more flourishes. But that only took a few more minutes. 

He contemplated going back to the silver-polishing, but he didn’t want to. It wasn’t really important, anyway—his plan didn’t involve any of the pieces that were waiting to be polished. And he was sure that when Mr. Carson saw the plan, he would be so impressed he’d forget all about the silver-polishing.

But if the _plan_ was impressive, how much more impressed would Carson be if he got back and found that the table was already ready for dinner? Very impressed, Thomas thought. Maybe even impressed enough to forget about the broken cat. 

Except that he wasn’t supposed to go upstairs, and the dining room was definitely upstairs. He could, he thought, make a case that the servery counted as “downstairs”—it was, technically, upstairs, but it was part of the butler’s and footmen’s work area. And the under-butler’s, of course. But not the dining room. 

Then Thomas had another terrific idea. He could get Jimmy and Alfred to set the table, according to his plan, before Carson got back. And maybe supervise them from the servery. Or from down here. Carson definitely couldn’t argue with that. 

But when Thomas went looking for them, he couldn’t find them. He asked Anna, who was in the servants’ hall mending one of Lady Mary’s dresses.

“James is meant to be attending the front door,” Anna said, “and Alfred…I’m not sure where he is, exactly. Why, do you need something?”

“No,” Thomas said, and went back into the butler’s pantry. Then he went back to the servants’ hall and said, “Send them in to me if they come down.”

“All right,” Anna said, sounding a little puzzled.

If they came soon, Thomas thought, there might be time to get the table done. Or at least enough to get far enough along for Mr. Carson to get the idea. Thomas decided that he’d make a start by getting out some of the glass and silver that they needed—the things he could reach, at least.

#

“—well enough, my lady, though her manners are a bit coarse,” Elsie was saying, in answer to a question from her ladyship about the new maid, Susan.

“Well, if she’s a hard worker, I suppose we can give her some time to improve,” her ladyship said. “But—” She looked over at the doorway, where Anna had appeared. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry to interrupt, my lady,” Anna said. “But there’s been an accident.” She glanced back and forth between her ladyship and Elsie.

“What sort of accident?” her ladyship asked.

“I don’t think it’s too serious, my lady,” Anna answered. “Mr. Barrow…fell. Mrs. Patmore and I think he may need stitches. Since Mr. Carson’s not back yet, I thought perhaps Mrs. Hughes should have a look first.”

Her ladyship glanced over at Elsie. “Yes, of course—we can finish this later. But I thought Barrow was ill?” She looked back at Anna. 

Anna looked, Elsie thought, _extremely_ evasive. Instead of answering the question her ladyship had asked, she said, “Mr. Carson left him some light duties to do. We’re not sure exactly what happened.”

Her ladyship dismissed them, added, “Let me know what Dr. Clarkson says.”

Once out of her sight, Elsie and Anna hurried downstairs. “What happened?” Elsie asked.

“I’m really not entirely sure. There was a crash, in Mr. Carson’s room. I ran in, and he was on the floor, bleeding from his head. It looked like he was _climbing_ the shelves in the silver cupboard, for some reason. Mrs. Patmore’s with him now.”

Mrs. Patmore was indeed with him—and Daisy, Ivy, Lucy, and a hall-boy. Elsie could barely see Thomas, lying on Mrs. Patmore’s lap with a kitchen towel to his head, through the crowd. “Clear out, everyone,” she said sternly. “This isn’t a side-show. Back to work.” 

As the others left the butler’s pantry, Elsie crouched next to Thomas and Mrs. Patmore. Thomas was very pale, and there were tear-tracks down his face, but he was conscious, at least. “What in God’s name were you doing?” she asked.

Thomas sniffled and said something about getting a vegetable dish down. 

“Knocked his head on the shelf there,” Mrs. Patmore added, nodding toward the silver cupboard. The edge of one shelf was thinly coated with blood—a shelf that was well above Thomas’s head, at his current size. 

“Let me see,” she said, easing the towel away from Thomas’s forehead. Blood welled up as soon as she did so, but she could see that the cut was a fairly long one. “My,” she said, keeping her voice calm. “That’s quite a gash. Anna, I think you had better make that telephone call.”

“Who are you telephoning?” Thomas asked, sounding alarmed.

“Doctor Clarkson,” she said, hoping that answer wouldn’t make things worse. Thomas seemed to be taking the situation calmly for now, but she didn’t think that would last if he _did_ need stitches.

But he seemed relieved by the answer. “Oh,” he said, getting out of Mrs. Patmore’s lap, still keeping the towel pressed to his forehead. 

“Don’t try to get up, Thomas,” Elsie said. “You may be dizzy. Just sit here until the doctor comes.”

Mrs. Patmore got up from the floor—not without some difficulty—and dusted off her skirts with her hands. “Well, I suppose I’ll be getting back to the kitchen before those girls create another disaster.” She gave Elsie an inquiring look.

Elsie nodded. Around the same time, Anna hung up the telephone. “He’s coming straight up,” she said. In a lower voice she asked, “What are we going to tell him?”

“I’m not sure,” Elsie said. Noticing that Thomas was starting to get teary-eyed again, Elsie patted his shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll be all right.” There was really an appalling amount of blood, but head wounds _did_ bleed a lot. “Does your head hurt?”

Thomas raised his head to give her a look of disgust. “ _Yes_.”

Of course it did. She’d meant to try to find out if it hurt an unusual amount, if there might be a more serious problem than just the cut, but she couldn’t think of how to ask. Better to leave it for the doctor, she decided. “What were you doing in the silver cupboard?” she asked instead, thinking the question would take Thomas’s mind off his wound.

Thomas said, “I wanted to—” and then burst into tears. 

#

Trying to explain to Mrs. Hughes what he had been doing, Thomas saw it clearly for the first time. What he had thought was a clever way to surprise Mr. Carson was, in fact, ridiculously wrong in every way. First of all, Mr. Carson _never_ liked surprises. Even under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t want Thomas to plan a table setting unless he’d been told to do it. Beyond that, the plan he’d made was absurdly elaborate for a simple dinner for the two ladies and Mr. Branson—even before he’d added the epergne and the second fruit bowl, it had been too much. Finally, it was barely two o’clock in the afternoon. Even if Carson would have liked the plan, and if it had been appropriate to the occasion, there was no hurry. He could have waited and had the things gotten down by someone who could reach them.

But it had made so much _sense_ when he’d been thinking it up. None of these obvious objections had even occurred to him—he’d been completely sure that it was all a splendid idea.

“There, now,” Mrs. Hughes was saying. “I’m sure Dr. Clarkson will fix you up good as new.”

Thomas shook his head. He wasn’t worried about _that_. He’d split his head open, not lost a limb. But it was clear that even before hitting his head, he’d been losing his mind. And he hadn’t even noticed. “I might need stitches,” he said, struggling to think like an adult. “Mrs. Patmore should put some water on to boil, in a clean saucepan. He’ll need to sterilize the needle.”

“All right,” Mrs. Hughes said. She stepped out into the corridor and relayed those instructions to someone—Thomas wasn’t sure who. One of the many people who had come to gawk, he supposed. 

Dr. Clarkson arrived not long after. “Ah,” he said, setting his medical bag on Mr. Carson’s desk. “Who is this lad?” he asked.

“Thomas,” Mrs. Hughes said, at the same time that Thomas said, “Barrow.”

“Oh,” Dr. Clarkson said. “Well, Thomas, let’s have a look.” Getting down on the floor with Thomas, he peeled the kitchen towel away from the wound. “Hm, yes. That will need seeing to, certainly. You can--” He gestured toward his forehead, and Thomas put the towel back. “Do you feel sick to your stomach?”

“No,” Thomas said. 

“Good.” Taking a pen from his jacket pocket, Dr. Clarkson said, “Follow this with your eyes, please.”

Thomas did.

“Good, good. Now, ah, come over here into the light.” 

Thomas stood up—managing not to fall over, although he did feel a little light-headed—and went over to the window. 

After examining his eyes for a moment, Clarkson said, “All right. Now, Thomas, how old are you?”

Before he could answer, Mrs. Hughes said, “He’s six.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hughes,” Dr. Clarkson said. “ _Thomas_ , what are your father and mother’s names?”

Thomas hesitated, unsure whether he was supposed to lie or not. Mrs. Hughes clearly didn’t want to tell the doctor who he really was—and that was all right with him—but he wasn’t sure what the story was supposed to be. Was he his own son? His nephew?

“Why do you need to know that, Doctor?” Mrs. Hughes asked.

“I need to assess whether he’s thinking normally. Confusion or disorientation following a head injury can be a sign of—well, let’s just say it’s something I’d need to know about.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Barrow,” Thomas said, a little mulishly. He didn’t think he’d known their Christian names when he was six. 

“Can you count to ten for me?”

Thomas did so. 

“All right. If you’ll just wait here a moment, Thomas, I’ll speak to your…to Mrs. Hughes, I suppose.”

#

Elsie and Dr. Clarkson stepped out into the corridor. “Did he lose consciousness at all, when he struck his head?”

“I’m not sure,” Elsie admitted. “Anna?”

“He was conscious when I went in,” she said. “So…probably not?”

The doctor looked back and forth between the two of them, with a disapproving expression. 

“I went in as soon as I heard him fall,” Anna added. “It took me less than a minute to get there. Half a minute.”

“He’s only been here a short time,” Elsie explained. “I expect we should have been watching him more carefully. None of us have much experience with children.”

“He will be all right, won’t he?” Anna asked.

Dr. Clarkson smiled and nodded. “These things happen to small boys. There are no signs of injury to the brain, so he should be fine. But he is going to need a few stitches, and it can be rather difficult to get children to hold still for them.” Opening his medical bag, he took out a small bottle. “Give him a good spoonful of this soothing syrup, while I prepare my instruments. Keep him calm—don’t tell him about the stitches. The less time they have to get themselves worked into a state, the better.” 

The doctor started for the kitchen, then turned back. “Where’s Barrow? I could use him if we need to hold the child down.”

Anna said, “He’s--”

“Not here,” Elsie finished. 

“Pity,” Clarkson said. “Well, we’ll have to make do.”

Once he had really gone, Elsie and Anna exchanged sheepish looks. “I wonder if we shouldn’t tell him the truth,” Anna said. 

Elsie had been thinking the same thing, but shook her head—they were already quite far down the garden path. “I don’t suppose there’s any reason he really needs to know,” she answered, and went in to Thomas.

He had gotten up and was putting some of the silver plate back into the cupboard—the lower shelves only, at least, but still, he looked rather pathetic, doing it one-handed while holding a blood-soaked tea towel to his head with the other. 

“You don’t need to do that,” Elsie told him.

Thomas shrugged. “I was the one who got it out.”

“Why did you?” Elsie asked, now that she had time to wonder about it. “You hadn’t finished what Mr. Carson left for you,” she added, looking over at the worktable.

“I…don’t really know,” Thomas answered. 

“You don’t remember?” Perhaps he _had_ injured his brain, after all—it wouldn’t be the first time Dr. Clarkson had been wrong.

“No, I remember. It just doesn’t make any sense.” Abandoning the silver cupboard, Thomas climbed up into Mr. Carson’s desk chair. “I wanted to--” He cut himself off abruptly when Mr. Carson himself came in.

“What is going on here?” he demanded.

“Thomas has hit his head,” Elsie explained. Opening the bottle, she added to Thomas, “Dr. Clarkson wants you to have a spoonful of this, before your stitches.” 

“You sent for the doctor?” Mr. Carson asked. “What did you tell him?”

“As little as possible,” Elsie answered. “And he thinks Thomas will be fine,” she added pointedly. Trust Mr. Carson to be more concerned about gossip getting out than he was about Thomas.

“Good,” Carson said, bending to look at Thomas’s forehead. “How did this happen? What were you doing?”

“I,” Thomas said, and fell silent. 

“I need a spoon,” Elsie said. “To give him this.” She raised the bottle.

Eyeing her suspiciously, Mr. Carson fetched one of the silver ones from the worktable. “Have you done any work since I left?” he asked as he returned—meaning Thomas, Elsie supposed, not her. “It certainly doesn’t look like it. And how did you--”

Noticing Thomas’s lower lip starting to wobble, Elsie said sharply, “Mr. Carson.” Taking the spoon from his hand, she added, “Dr. Clarkson wants him kept calm.”

“I see,” Mr. Carson said. “Well. Perhaps I’ll just—see what’s keeping him.” He left the pantry.

As she gave Thomas his medicine, Elsie advised, “Don’t worry about Mr. Carson.”

After swallowing the medicine, Thomas drooped and said forlornly, “I wanted to surprise him.”

In that case, he had succeeded, Elsie thought—but, she hoped, not in the way he had intended. “Surprise him with what?”

Sniffling, he rummaged through the pile of silver on the desk and produced a crumpled (and slightly bloodstained) sheet of paper. After some moments of study, Elsie recognized it as a table-setting plan—though for what occasion, she couldn’t imagine. A royal visit, perhaps. 

“I wanted to have the table ready when he got back,” Thomas explained. 

“Ready for what?” Elsie asked, wondering if there was some additional component to the surprise that they should be ready for. 

“Dinner,” Thomas said. 

“Oh,” she said. “Well, it’s certainly…festive.”

Eying her, Thomas said, “I know it’s all wrong. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Perhaps we’ll save it for another time,” Elsie suggested, folding the paper. Mr. Carson ought to see it, she thought—though whether as evidence of Thomas’s good intentions or of his increasing decline, she wasn’t sure. 

By the time Dr. Clarkson came in, Thomas was very quiet and a little glassy-eyed. He barely responded when Clarkson explained that he was going to fix up his cut, and that it might hurt a bit, but he was to be “a big boy, and don’t fuss.”

Instead of becoming outraged at the suggestion that he might do otherwise, Thomas just nodded weakly. 

“The syrup seems to have worked,” Clarkson said to Elsie. “This should be fairly easy. I, ah, usually have them sit on the mother’s lap, for something like this. I take it…?” He trailed off delicately.

“No, she isn’t here,” Elsie said. “I’ll hold him.”

Thomas didn’t protest that particular indignity, either. He did wince a little, and hissed between his teeth, when the wound was bathed with antiseptic, but remained stoic during the actual stitching. As he worked, Dr. Clarkson explained to Elsie, “The most important thing is to keep the wound clean. For the first few days, you must change the dressing daily. When you do, wash the wound with antiseptic and check carefully for signs of infection—redness, swelling, or discharge. Send for me immediately if you see any of those. Don’t wait for it to get bad—by the time it does, there won’t be much I can do.”

Elsie nodded. A family she’d worked for before coming to Downton had lost a child when a simple cut on his foot became infected. Modern antiseptics were better that the old treatments, but they still couldn’t cure an infection that had taken hold inside the body. “I will.”

The doctor went on, “After it’s begun to heal, it’s best to take the dressing off and expose the wound to air, but he must be kept from scratching or playing with the stitches. If keeping the bandage on is the only way to keep his germ-laden little fingers out of it, keep it on.”

“I expect we can manage that,” Elsie said. “When will the stitches need to be removed?”

“About ten days.”

Would Thomas still be a child in ten days, she wondered? And if he wasn’t, would he still have the stitches when he changed back? 

“Sergeant Barrow—Mr. Barrow, I mean—knows how to do it, or if Thomas here has gone home by then, any medical man can take them out.”

Elsie could tell that Dr. Clarkson was probing for more details about who the child was and why he was at Downton, but she didn’t indulge him. “Of course,” she said. 

“There, now, Thomas,” Dr. Clarkson went on, “you’re doing very well. Just one more, I think.” 

“Mm,” Thomas said sleepily.

After clipping off the last stitch, Dr. Clarkson took a roll of gauze and wound it several times around Thomas’s head. It made the injury look far more serious than it really was—perhaps not a bad thing, Elsie thought, if it would stop Mr. Carson from barking.

And indeed, Carson looked duly impressed when he came in, as Dr. Clarkson was packing his medical bag. “How is the patient?” he asked.

“It doesn’t look too serious,” Dr. Clarkson said. “I’ve given Mrs. Hughes all the instructions.” He glanced inquiringly back at her.

“That’s fine,” she told him. “I expect now we should be putting the little chap to bed?”

Thomas took notice of that, sitting up straight and saying, “What?”

Dr. Clarkson bent down to his level and explained, “The medicine Mrs. Hughes gave you will have you feeling sleepy for the rest of the day. But by morning you should be right as rain.”

“I can’t go to bed,” Thomas objected, getting down from her lap. “I still have all the silver to finish for Mr. Carson.” He was weaving a little on his feet; Elsie had to reach out her hand and steady him. 

“You can do it tomorrow,” Elsie said soothingly. Or not, she thought, but they could discuss that at another time. 

Carson cleared his throat. “Yes, Thomas, the silver can wait.”

Dr. Clarkson broke in. “If he has any symptoms beyond a mild headache, send for me again. I’ll see myself out.”

#

“You want me to _what_?” Jimmy asked. 

“Take Mr. Barrow to bed. _Put_ him to bed,” Mr. Carson corrected himself, turning an alarming shade of mauve. “I’ve explained about the medication. Mrs. Hughes doesn’t think he’ll make it there on his own.”

“Then why doesn’t she do it?”

“Because _she_ is a woman. Mr. Barrow is a man.”

“Right now he’s a child,” Jimmy pointed out. “And even if he wasn’t….” From the point of view of propriety, it seemed like it would make more sense to have one of the women do it. But Jimmy didn’t think Carson would take well to that idea, any more than he had to Jimmy’s suggestion—back before he and Thomas had mended fences—that Thomas ought to be given a bedroom on the women’s corridor, since _they’d_ be safe from him. 

“Precisely,” Carson said. “He’s a child; someone needs to put him to bed, and I’ve asked you to do it.”

“I’m not a nursemaid,” Jimmy protested.

“No, you’re a footman, and if you wish to continue to be one….”

“Fine!” Jimmy said, throwing up his hands. “Should I make sure he washes behind his ears?”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

He found Thomas in the servants’ hall, slumped over the table with his head on his folded arms. “Mr. Barrow,” Jimmy said, feeling like an idiot. “Mr. Barrow!”

Thomas looked up. “Oh. Jimmy. What can I…d’you need something?”

“I thought you might need some help getting upstairs.”

Thomas frowned. “I’m not supposed to go upstairs.”

“Up to your bedroom,” Jimmy explained. Across the table, Susan tittered. Taking Thomas by the arm, he pulled him to his feet. “Come on, up you get.” 

Jimmy didn’t _quite_ have to carry the under-butler upstairs, but there were several times when it seemed a near thing. Once in his bedroom, Thomas collapsed onto the bed. 

“You need to get undressed,” Jimmy reminded him.

Turning over onto his back, Thomas blinked up at him owlishly. “Shouldn’t say things like that, Jimmy. Give a bloke the wrong idea.”

That was just _wrong_ , considering how Thomas looked now. Not that it was _right_ under ordinary circumstances, either. Shaking his head, Jimmy sat down on the bed and started untying Thomas’s shoes—his very small shoes. “I wonder why your clothes shrank when you did?”

“Don’t know,” Thomas said. “I’m glad my cigarettes didn’t.” He giggled.

Yes, really. Giggled. Dropping the shoes on the floor, Jimmy stood up. “Where’s your pyjamas?”

Thomas made a sweeping gesture in the direction of the bureau.

By the time Jimmy found them, Thomas had dozed off. He was as limp as a rag doll while Jimmy stripped him out of his miniaturized livery and put him into the pyjama top. It came down to his knees; Jimmy decided there wasn’t much point trying to get the trousers on him. After tossing the livery over a chair, he glanced over at Thomas. Realizing that if he was going to do this, he might as well do it right, he went back and tucked him in. 

#

In the foggy moments between sleep and wakefulness, Thomas mulled over the strange dream he’d just had. He’d been climbing the shelves in Carson’s pantry, for some reason that had made perfect sense in the twisted logic of dreams, but that eluded him now. Because he’d been small—a child. Why he was dreaming that he was a child at Downton, Thomas couldn’t begin to imagine. He’d fallen and cracked his head open—funny, his head really did hurt a bit.

It was only when he reached up to rub his forehead, and his fingers met bandages instead of skin, that he remembered. It wasn’t a dream at all; it had really happened. 

Sitting up, he swung his legs over the side of the bed—and yes, his feet didn’t touch the floor. For a moment, Thomas hoped that he might still be dreaming. That had happened quite a bit, when he first came back from the Front: he’d dream of the trenches, wake and think “Thank God I’m home,” then open his eyes and see a dugout. It had always taken him a few moments to figure out what was real, when he woke for the second time.

But now, when he hoped he _was_ still dreaming, he wasn’t. It all came back to him, as his thoughts firmed up: the statue, his transformation. Climbing the shelves in Carson’s pantry. Dr. Clarkson stitching up his head. And, the final indignity, Jimmy putting him to bed. 

Thomas’s head swam as he stood up, but after a moment, the dizziness passed. The part about Jimmy putting him to bed had definitely been true—Thomas would never have left his livery crumpled up like that. He picked up the jacket—it would take a pressing, now, to get the creases out. And his shirt, which had already been in need of a wash, was now bloodstained. 

He remembered trying to keep the blood off his jacket, but now that he inspected it, he found two small spots on the cuff. They were barely visible against the black fabric, but trust Mr. Carson to notice. He’d better hurry, if he was going to be presentable for breakfast, it was already—he glanced at the alarm clock, then hurried over to check if it was still ticking. 

A quarter till eight, it said, but that couldn’t possibly be right—it was barely light out. Thomas went to the window and parted the curtains to confirm it. That was funny, the sun was…oh. 

It was _evening_. He’d had his fall in early afternoon, he remembered, and Jimmy had brought him up to bed shortly after Dr. Clarkson had left. He’d only slept for about four hours. 

That was good, considering how tired he still was. Plenty of time to wash his shirt, press his jacket, and then go back to bed. 

Taking his shirt and jacket into the bathroom, he soaked the shirt in cold water, and sponged the stains on his jacket. Fortunately, despite the delay in treating them, the marks on the jacket came right out. The shirt was still a little blotchy, even after a long soak and a bit of scrubbing. He’d have to get some lemon juice or vinegar from Mrs. Patmore.

And that, he realized, presented another problem—he could hardly go downstairs in his underwear and pyjama shirt. He’d have to resort to—he shuddered—the hallboy’s clothes.

They were quite a bit too large, but Thomas didn’t have time for major alterations. He cinched the trousers up with a belt, rolled up the legs and sleeves, and ventured out, planning to be seen by as few people as possible.

He’d forgotten that at nearly eight o’clock, the kitchen would be swarming, the cooks and kitchen maids putting the finishing touches on the meal, and the footmen waiting to carry it up. His hopes of going largely unnoticed were dashed Mrs. Patmore saw him and said, “Thomas! What are you doing out of bed?”

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at him. 

Standing as tall as he could, Thomas cleared his throat. “I just wanted some lemon juice. Or vinegar. For cleaning my shirt. When you have a minute.” He hurried out.

After doing that, though, he wasn’t terribly sure where to go. Everyone who hadn’t already seen him would be in the servants’ hall, so he didn’t want to go _there_. He lingered for a moment, undecided. Then Mrs. Hughes came out of her sitting room. “Thomas!” She said, exactly as Mrs. Patmore had. “What are you doing out of bed?”

Once again, Thomas explained about his shirt. “And I need to press my jacket. I don’t want to come down in the morning dressed like _this_ , do I?”

“I suppose not,” she said, looking at him. “But you shouldn’t be up.”

“I feel fine,” he said, touching his bandaged forehead. 

“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “You go back to bed, and I’ll see to it that your things are ready for you in the morning.”

Thomas regarded her suspiciously for a moment, but he couldn’t think of any reason she’d lie. “All right.” He was going to have a great deal of trouble reaching the top of the ironing board, anyway. He handed the clothes over.

“Good. Are you hungry?” she asked abruptly.

“A little.” He’d missed tea, and it was nearly supper time. But he wasn’t sure that he’d last through supper—not to mention that it would provide the others with more time to see him in the hallboy’s clothes. 

“Once Mrs. Patmore’s finished with the upstairs dinner, I’ll have her fix you a tray,” Mrs. Hughes said. 

“That would be perfect,” Thomas said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now,” she said, guiding him over to the stairs with one hand on his back, “go back up, and _rest_.”

#

When the Elsie saw the last course going up, she went into the kitchen. Daisy and Ivy were still hard at work on the servants’ dinner, but Mrs. Patmore’s role was largely supervisory at that stage. “I’d like to take a tray up to—Thomas,” she explained. Calling him “Mr. Barrow” was becoming increasingly awkward. “Do you have something ready that you can send up?”

The cook frowned. “Let’s see…there’s a bit of the spring pea soup left. The ladies didn’t want much.”

“That’s the one with the bacon, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Patmore nodded. “And the cheese croutons.”

Mrs. Bunn didn’t approve of bacon for children, but a small amount in soup couldn’t do much harm, Elsie decided. “All right.”

“I’ve some nice custard left from the nursery tea, too,” Mrs. Patmore added, bustling off to get it. 

Somehow, it seemed, Mrs. Patmore must have developed a soft spot for Thomas—that was three times now that she had fixed special food for him, without complaint. 

Thomas was curled up in bed when she went into his room. Elsie contemplated letting him sleep—but it didn’t seem a very good idea to let him go from lunch to the next day’s breakfast without eating. She tapped on the door a second time. “I’m awake,” he mumbled unconvincingly.

“Good,” she said, setting the tray on his desk and turning on the light. 

That seemed to genuinely wake him up. He sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Oh—thanks, Mrs. Hughes.”

“It’s soup and a bit of custard,” she told him. “I’ll send one of the lads up for the tray later.”

But she ended up going up for it herself—she hadn’t actually seen him get up and start eating, and she found herself wondering if he really had. Perhaps she should have stayed and made sure he ate? It didn’t seem entirely _right_ , leaving the child alone at the top of the house for all this time. 

When she went to his room for the second time, Thomas was lying in exactly the same position e had been earlier, but the supper-tray _had_ been eaten—at least, half of the soup had been, and all of the custard. 

As she picked up the tray, Elsie’s eye fell on the suit that Thomas had worn to come downstairs earlier in the evening. He’d said he was going to alter it, but he clearly hadn’t—he’d looked like a little scarecrow. 

Shaking her head, she shifted the tray into one hand, and picked up the clothes with the other. She had time to do a bit of sewing, tonight. 

#

“I nearly forgot to ask,” Cora said as Carson was handing around the after-dinner coffee. “How is Barrow?”

Carson froze, just for a second. “Barrow, my lady? The same.”

Cora and Mary exchanged a glance. “Apparently he had some sort of accident?”

“Oh. Yes, my lady. He struck his head, but he seems to be fine.”

“Good,” Cora said. “Do let me know if there’s anything he needs.”

“Of course, my lady.”

When Carson withdrew, Cora leaned in closer to Mary. “You’re right; the servants are hiding something.”

Mary nodded. “Perhaps he’s kissed another footman.”

“Perhaps. I wish O’Brien was still here. She’d tell me if there was anything I need to know. The new woman is very closed-mouthed.”

“I’ll ask Anna,” Mary declared. “She won’t want to tell me, if Carson’s told them to keep it quiet, but I’ll get it out of her.”

#

As Anna was braiding her hair for bed, Lady Mary asked casually, “How are things downstairs?”

“Oh—about the same as usual, my lady,” Anna answered cautiously. She didn’t feel right about keeping Thomas’s situation a secret from the ladies, but if Mrs. Hughes and Mr. Carson were agreed, she didn’t think it her place to go against them, either. “I miss Mr. Bates, of course,” she added, since that was both true and no secret.

“He and Papa should be back any day now,” Lady Mary observed. She paused just long enough for Anna to hope that the subject had been dropped, before continuing, “So there isn’t anything unusual happening?”

“Ah,” Anna said. Trying to think of something to say that would not be a lie, she asked, “Unusual how?”

Lady Mary turned, pulling her braid out of Anna’s hands. “Clearly there’s something.”

Anna hesitated, glancing over at the door. “Mr. Carson thinks his lordship should be the first to be told.”

“Told what?”

“Perhaps you should ask Mr. Carson, my lady,” Anna said desperately. 

“I can hardly ring for him when I’m in my nightdress,” Lady Mary pointed out. “I know it’s to do with Barrow. Is it…something like what happened last year?”

“No, no, nothing like that.” Belatedly, Anna remembered that the ladies weren’t supposed to know about what happened last year, either. 

Noticing her expression, Lady Mary explained, “O’Brien told Mama everything, after the police came to the cricket match. If it isn’t like that, why won’t Carson tell us?”

“He thinks it best, my lady,” Anna answered. She didn’t fully understand Mr. Carson’s reasoning herself. “Please don’t ask me to go against Mr. Carson’s orders. It puts me in a very difficult position.”

Lady Mary turned back to the mirror. “Well, I think he’s the one putting you in a difficult position, asking you to keep secrets from me and Mama.”

“That’s as may be, my lady. But if you’re going to insist on being told, I wish you’d ask him and not me. The situation will still be the same in the morning.”

“Oh, all right,” Lady Mary relented. “Wake me a bit early; I’ll dress and go down to breakfast, so I can ask him then.”

#

“Where’s Mr. Carson?” Anna asked, appearing in the doorway to Elsie’s sitting room.

“In his pantry, I think,” she said, holding up the trousers from Herbert’s old suit. A boy of six ought to be in short trousers, but she didn’t think Thomas would stand for that. “There’s still a bit of mess to clean up from this afternoon.”

“Good.” Anna came inside and closed the door behind her. “Lady Mary asked me a number of probing questions while I was getting her ready for bed.”

“Did you tell her anything?” Elsie asked, putting down the trousers.

Anna hesitated. “I didn’t tell her what happened. But she knew something had, and finally I had to say that Mr. Carson had asked us not to tell. She’s planning to question him tomorrow at breakfast.”

“Oh, dear,” Elsie said. “Forewarned is forearmed, I suppose.” Shaking her head, she set about pinning up the cuffs of the trousers.

“For Thomas?” Anna asked, nodding at what she was doing. 

“Yes—I’m not sure if he’ll wear them, but I don’t think the livery is very practical for a small boy.”

“I suppose not,” Anna agreed, picking up a small shirt from the pile of clothing. “Do you have another needle?”

“In my sewing box,” she said. “But you don’t have to.”

Opening the sewing box, Anna answered, “I don’t know much about boys’ clothes. I can use the practice.”

Elsie glanced at Anna’s stomach. “Are you--?”

“Oh, no, not yet. Mr. Bates and I were talking about it, but then when Mr. Crawley passed, I didn’t think I should leave Lady Mary just yet. But we might start trying soon.”

In Elsie’s day, a young woman didn’t have much choice about when her babies came, but things were different now. She was a bit unsure of the details, but Lady Sybil, rest her soul, had directed Anna to a clinic that would provide what she needed. “That’ll be nice,” Elsie said. She had made her choice, but she still sometimes thought about the road not taken. In a way, she supposed, she was getting a taste of it now, with a small boy to look after. 

#

Thomas slept badly in the second half of the night, troubled by strange dreams that combined elements of his current situation with the ghosts of the past. In one fragment, he was stumbling through a trench, struggling to hold up the end of a stretcher, even though he was only four feet tall. In another, he stumbled against the shelves in Carson’s pantry—at his normal size—caught sight of his reflection in a silver bowl, a perfectly round hole drilled into the center of his forehead.

The worst of them all, though, was one where all of the catastrophes of his life at Downton descended at once. Betrayed by the Duke of Crowborough, he was caught stealing, then lost all of his money in the black market scheme, tried to kiss Jimmy, and was turned out into the street, a penniless, friendless child.

At least this time it really was a dream. That was something, he supposed. But still, he dragged himself out of bed more tired than when he’d gotten into it. Given what an utter disaster yesterday had been, he knew that he ought to face the day with some sort of plan for redeeming himself, but all he really wanted was to go back to sleep.

Instead, he put on his livery—it had been returned, cleaned and pressed, as Mrs. Hughes had promised. After cleaning his teeth and washing his face—those parts of it that were not covered by bandages—he went out into the passage, and immediately bumped into Alfred.

“Are you all right?” he asked, looking down at Thomas.

“Of course I am,” Thomas said. 

“It’s just that you were making a bit of noise during the night.”

Splendid. “I didn’t sleep well.”

“Oh.”

At breakfast, Mrs. Patmore brought him another egg, but since no one was trying to deny him tea, Thomas decided not to raise a fuss over it.

When Jimmy came in—a few minutes late, as he often was—Mr. Carson said, “James, you’ll be on duty in the breakfast room this morning.”

“I will?” Jimmy asked. Carson or Thomas usually did that.

“Yes,” Mr. Carson said, without explanation. From the way Mrs. Hughes was looking at Carson, Thomas suspected there was a story there, but he was quite sure he wouldn’t be hearing it. Not in front of everyone, at any rate.

A few minutes later, Carson left the table to answer a knock at the tradesmen’s entrance and returned carrying a handful of post. Placing one letter by his own plate, he handed out the others, then sat down again. 

The writing on the envelope was unfamiliar, and Thomas just knew it had to be from the Egyptologist. It ought to have been addressed to _him_ , not Carson, he thought. Worse yet, Carson showed absolutely no interest in opening it. 

Just as Thomas was wondering whether he could sneak it away and read it, Mrs. Hughes asked, “Is that, by any chance, from…?”

“Sir Edmund, yes,” Carson answered, taking another bite of porridge.

“Are you going to read it?” Thomas asked.

Carson glared at him. “One normally reads letters.”

Mrs. Hughes directed a quelling glance at both of them. “Perhaps we should open it in my parlour after breakfast,” she suggested. “I’m sure Thomas is anxious to know what it says.”

After a mysterious exchange of glances between Carson and Mrs. Hughes, Carson agreed to the plan. But he seemed to linger longer than usual over his breakfast. 

Finally, they moved into the housekeeper’s parlour. Mr. Carson slit the envelope and took out the letter. 

Moments passed. “Aren’t you going to _read_ it?” Thomas asked.

“I am.”

“To _us_?” Mrs. Hughes asked. 

Thomas was glad she had said it not him. Mr. Carson sighed. “He opens by saying that non-fatal curses are _often_ reversible.”

Often was good. Not as good as “always,” but good. 

Carson went on, “Unfortunately, since all curses are unique, he can’t offer any immediate advice.”

Not so good.

“But he’ll be pleased to look into the matter.”

“Wonderful,” Mrs. Hughes said, clapping her hands together. 

“There is ‘every reason to be hopeful, as curses of this type are often intended to inconvenience rather than seriously harm the recipient,’” Carson read. “Mm, mm ‘…papyrus contained within the artifact is highly likely to contain some clue as to the means of reversal, though in such cases it is often couched in the form of a riddle.’” Carson’s eyes went back and forth as he scanned the next few lines. “Then he goes on for several paragraphs about his personal theory that Egyptians created such things as a form of practical joke.”

“I don’t think it’s very funny,” Thomas observed.

“Nor do I, Mr. Barrow,” Carson said, turning to the second page. “Oh, no.”

“What?” Thomas asked, alarmed.

“He’s coming. To investigate the artifact and the victim, he says.”

“That sounds quite kind of him,” Mrs. Hughes said. 

Thomas didn’t see a problem, either. “His lordship should be back today or tomorrow,” he pointed out. “I’m sure he’ll agree to have Sir Edmund here, once we…explain.”

“He left last night,” Mr. Carson said in a strangled voice. “On the Flying Scotsman. After retrieving some reference materials from the British Museum—he’s listed them; I can’t imagine why—he expects to arrive here on the 3:05 from London. He hopes that is convenient for us; given the urgency of the situation, he sees no reason to stand on ceremony.” Crumpling the pages of the letter in one hand, Carson passed the other across his brow.

“Bloody hell,” Thomas said. 

“ _Language_ , Mr. Barrow,” Carson snapped.

“Sorry.” But this was very bad. Egyptologists turning up out of the blue were sure to raise questions. Her ladyship would know she hadn’t asked him. And not even Mr. Carson was meant to go _inviting_ people to Downton. Not that he precisely _had_. 

“Arriving without an invitation. I should have known an _explorer_ would have no manners,” Carson said. “Knighted or not. All that time in foreign parts.”

“It seems quite reasonable of him to expect that, having asked for his help, we’d be glad to receive it as quickly as possible,” Mrs. Hughes pointed out. 

“He could have _telephoned_. Or sent a cable. Anything but just hopping on the next train, like a savage.”

Despite the severity of the situation, Thomas had to smile at the mental image. “Do savages take trains?”

“That is not the point,” Carson said.

“I suppose not,” Thomas admitted. “But I don’t think they do.”

Shaking her head at him, Mrs. Hughes told Carson, “You’ll have to tell them, that’s all. In my opinion, you should have faced up to the music at breakfast, instead of sending _James_ in to cover for you.” Before Mr. Carson could reply, someone tapped at the door. “Yes?” Mrs. Hughes said.

Jimmy stuck his head in. “His lordship just telephoned. He’s coming back this afternoon.”

“What train?” Carson asked, with a slight tremor in his voice.

“The 3:05.” Glancing back and forth between them, Jimmy added, “Sorry, if I’ve interrupted something. I just thought you’d want to know.”

Mrs. Hughes found her voice first. “Yes. Thank you, James. You can go now.” As soon as the door closed behind him, Mrs. Hughes said, “Now you _must_ tell them.”

At the same moment, Carson said, “We certainly can’t tell them _now_.”

Thomas wasn’t sure which side he came down on. Mostly, he was glad that the letter _had_ been addressed to Carson, and that Carson had been the one to bring the matter to Sir Edmund’s attention. Whatever else Thomas could be blamed for, he was clearly innocent in the matter of the mysteriously appearing Egyptologist. 

“What do you propose?” Mrs. Hughes asked. “Shall we show Sir Edmund in through one door while his lordship enters through another, like a French farce?”

“No,” Carson said. “We’ll--” He stopped. “We’ll think of something.”

“What if someone meets Sir Edmund at the station, and…delays him somehow,” Thomas suggested. “The car could break down, or the driver could get lost.” 

“Downton’s chimneys can be _seen_ from the station,” Mrs. Hughes reminded him. “No one could get lost…and if the car breaks down, he could decide to walk.”

“Not if it’s raining,” Thomas said. 

Mrs. Hughes looked over at the window, which revealed a cloudless blue sky. 

Oh. “Miss O’Brien was usually in charge of coming up with the schemes,” he admitted. Then he realized what he had said, and to whom. “I mean, I have no experience with schemes whatsoever.”

Mrs. Hughes and Carson both looked at him with frank disbelief. 

“Let’s put that to one side for the moment,” Carson said. “The first thing we must do is prepare for his lordship’s return, and the arrival of our guest. We have until three o’clock to think of a plan.”

#

“And her ladyship doesn’t know about any of this?” Mrs. Patmore asked.

“She knows his lordship is returning,” Elsie explained. “She doesn’t know about Sir Edmund.”

“I see,” Mrs. Patmore said. “Well, I think we can continue with the chicken as planned, but I’ll add a fish course, and we’ll do the potatoes a la duchesse, since his lordship is so fond of those.”

Elsie agreed that that sounded suitable, and went off to tell Alice and Susan they needed to prepare a room on the bachelors’ corridor. 

On the way, she ran into Mr. Carson, who was telling Thomas, “Take James, and make sure his lordship’s dressing room is in good order.” 

“I can do it myself, Mr. Carson,” Thomas objected.

“I don’t want any more accidents,” Mr. Carson answered. Over Thomas’s head, he mouthed to James, “ _Watch him_.”

“I thought you didn’t want him upstairs,” Elsie pointed out after the two had left.

“Mr. Branson is out, and both of the ladies are in the morning room. It should be safe enough—and I don’t want him wandering around on his own.” He shook his head. “It’s bad enough not having Mr. Barrow, but now I have to assign someone to keep him out of trouble.”

Elsie broke in to tell him about the changes to the menu. 

“That’s fine, as long as Mrs. Patmore has everything she needs. But if we’re to have a visitor for dinner, I’ll have to think of something to do about centerpieces.”

“You might start with this,” she suggested, taking out Thomas’s diagram, which she had never gotten around to showing him yesterday. “You’d have to subtract some of the more fantastical elements, of course.”

“What is this?” Mr. Carson asked, scanning it.

“Thomas was working on it yesterday. He wanted to surprise you.”

“Oh, dear God,” Carson said.

“I thought it was sweet of him. If a little…misguided.”

“This was meant to be for _yesterday_?”

“He realized later that it was a bit…elaborate.”

“I can use some of it,” Mr. Carson said, nodding. “Not the epergne, and one fruit bowl is sufficient, but the candelabra is all right, and the napkins…Alfred!” 

The second footman hurried over. “Yes, Mr. Carson?”

“Go tell the gardener we need these things for the table setting this evening.” He pointed to a section of the diagram. “Just these three. _Not_ the topiary.”

“Yes, Mr. Carson.” Alfred loped off.

Turning back to Elsie, Mr. Carson continued, “We cannot leave Thomas unsupervised for even a moment. The last thing we need today is any more _surprises_.”

#

“Carson,” Mary said, going into the breakfast room. The butler had been mysteriously absent from breakfast; she strongly suspected Anna had tipped him off. But now he was there, clearing the sideboard.

Carson stepped away from the sideboard, putting his hands behind his back and looking guilty. “My lady. I apologize; I thought everyone had finished with breakfast.”

“We have,” she answered. “But I wanted to speak to you.”

“Did you, my lady? How kind of you.”

“Yes.” Now Mary hesitated. It was one thing to _plan_ to interrogate the butler who had known her since she was born; it was another to actually do so. “Is there something wrong? You seem a little…preoccupied.”

“Nothing I need to trouble you with, my lady.”

“I suppose the matter with Barrow has you a bit shorthanded.”

“Mr. Barrow, my lady?” Carson asked, as though there might be another one.

“Yes—you said the other day that he was unwell?”

“Oh. That. Yes, my lady. We’re hoping he’ll be back to normal soon.”

“So it isn’t anything serious?”

“Ah,” Carson said. After a long pause, he answered, “He seems in good spirits at the moment.”

“Good,” Mary said, nodding. So it _was_ serious—whatever _it_ was. Now was the time to tell him that she knew he’d told the other servants to keep it a secret from her and Mama, and that she insisted on being told immediately. But when she opened her mouth to ask, her nerve failed her. “Well. I’ll—let you get back to it,” she said, nodding toward the sideboard.

“Thank you, my lady.”

#

“Everything looks fine in here,” Jimmy started to say, at the same time that Thomas said,

“We certainly have our work cut out for us.” They were in the dressing room—which, as usual, Mr. Bates had left in a right state. Glaring up at Jimmy, Thomas said, “Take the decanter down and fill it, then bring up some coal and kindling. We should lay a fire in case it’s chilly this evening. I’ll get started on the dusting.”

“Are you…sure that’s such a good idea?” Jimmy asked.

“I’m still the under-butler,” Thomas pointed out. For now, at least. “You think I should be carrying coal?”

“No,” Jimmy said. “No, ah…I just thought maybe we should do the dusting together. And then go downstairs. Together.”

“Why?” Thomas asked suspiciously. Had someone been bearing tales? “I’m hardly after Bates’s job now. I’m under-butler. I outrank him.”

“It isn’t that,” Jimmy said. “I just…we don’t want another accident, do we?”

Carson had said the same thing, Thomas remembered. “I’m not going to have another accident. Do as you’re told.”

“All right,” Jimmy said skeptically. 

As he left, Thomas looked around for something sturdy that he could stand on to dust the top of the dresser. He really _didn’t_ want any more accidents.

#

“James! What are you doing down here? Where is Mr. Barrow?” Carson demanded. He was sure that the ladies—or at least, Lady Mary—knew something was afoot. The last thing he needed was Thomas unsupervised and getting into trouble.

“He’s still in the dressing room,” James explained. Lifting his lordship’s whiskey decanter, he added, “He told me to bring this down to be filled. And to get some coal.”

“And _I_ told you to watch him.”

“He’s the under-butler,” James pointed out with a shrug. “What do you want me to do?”

“Do _not_ follow any orders that he gives you,” Carson answered. Reluctantly, he added, “While he’s like this.”

Looking like a confused spaniel, James said, “But he’s meant to be all right…mentally, isn’t he?”

Belatedly, Carson remembered that he and Mrs. Hughes hadn’t brought the recent developments to the attention of the lower servants. “The situation has changed. He seems to be becoming…childish.” He took the decanter from James’s hand. “I’ll deal with this, and send one of the hall-boys up with the coal. Go back up there, and don’t let him out of your sight.”

#

Jimmy experienced a moment of heart-stopping panic when he returned to the dressing room, and Thomas was nowhere in sight. “Thomas!” he called in a harsh whisper. “Thomas!” He wasn’t sure how “childish” Thomas had gotten—enough for hide-and-go-seek to seem amusing? “Are you hiding?” 

Thomas came in through the door leading to his lordship and her ladyship’s bedroom, carrying his lordship’s dressing gown. “It’s Mr. Barrow. And why would I be hiding?”

Jimmy shook his head. “What were you doing in there?”

“Getting this,” Thomas answered, passing him the dressing gown. “He leaves it in there sometimes when he gets up early. Put it in the wardrobe.” As James did so, Thomas went on, “Where’s the decanter? And the coal? Can’t you do anything?”

He certainly seemed his usual self to Jimmy. “Mr. Carson said he’d get the whiskey, and he’s sending one of the hall-boys up with the coal. He wanted me back up here in case you…needed any help.”

Thomas eyed him suspiciously. “Why would I need help?”

“I don’t know,” Jimmy lied. “What else do we need to do up here?”

#

“This is what happens when you don’t get them out in the fresh air,” Mrs. Bunn opined. She’d come down to discuss the nursery menus with Mrs. Patmore—apparently, she’d sent up something fried for yesterday’s tea, and the nanny disapproved. Elsie had stopped her to ask if she had any more advice about Thomas.

“I’m not sure I see the connection,” Elsie said cautiously.

“If they don’t get enough exercise, they start climbing the walls. Literally, in this case.” She shook her head. “Take him out for a walk, every day. Rain or shine.” She looked around. “Where is he now?”

“One of the footmen is watching him,” Elsie said. Then she added, “I understand you don’t want him in the nursery, but I wonder if you could take him along when you take the babies out.” Mrs. Bunn didn’t say ‘no’ right away, so she went on, “It’s just that we’re all so busy.” 

“You think I’m not busy? It’s difficult enough keeping little Sybil from wandering off. I tell her and tell her to keep her hand on the pram if she wants to walk, but will she? They ought to have separate nannies.”

Inspired, Elsie suggested, “Perhaps Thomas could help. He still remembers being an adult, you know. He’s just…impulsive.”

#

“First you said you’d find out from Anna,” Cora said, “and then from Carson. Now we still don’t know anything—except that there _is_ something.”

“I know,” Mary said, as they walked down the main street of the village. “But when I tried to ask him, I just couldn’t. I mean, it’s Carson.”

Cora nodded. “I suppose there’s only one solution.”

“Yes,” Mary said. “ _You_ have to ask him.”

“I was going to say, we should just wait until your father comes home.”

“I don’t like things being kept from us just because we’re women,” Mary argued.

“It could be some sort of…male problem,” Cora suggested as they paused to look into the window of the millinery shop. “What do you think of that hat?”

“It looks like something Edith would wear,” Mary answered. “What kind of ‘male problem’?”

Mary was right; it rather did. “I don’t know. But we have female problems we don’t tell men about. Surely there are things that can happen to their…parts.”

“It all seems fairly straightforward to me.” 

Cora shook her head. “I can’t ask Carson if there’s something wrong with Barrow’s….parts.”

“Maybe you won’t have to,” Mary said.

Before Cora could say that she hadn’t been planning to, Mary raised her hand in a wave. “Dr. Clarkson! Just the man we wanted to see.”

#

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Thomas said, after hearing what Mrs. Bunn had planned for him, “but do you know who I am?” Under-butlers did not help mind children. They certainly did not “help” as excuse to be minded themselves, which he strongly suspected was the case. 

“Right now you’re a little boy who’s going to get a smacked bottom if he doesn’t listen to Nanny!”

Thomas narrowed his eyes. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me.”

Studying her face for a moment, Thomas decided that he did not, in fact, want to try her. Turning to the little girl, he took her hand, saying, “Well, Miss Sybil, it looks like we’ll be going for a walk.”

Then he dropped her hand, wiping it against the trousers of his hall-boy suit. She was _sticky_.

“ _Keep_ hold of her hand,” Mrs. Bunn boomed. 

Glaring at her, Thomas took out his handkerchief and thoroughly wiped Miss Sybil’s hand. “All right,” he said, taking it. “Can we go now?”

“I don’t like your tone, young man,” Mrs. Bunn said, leaning against the handle of the pram to set it in motion.

#

“Oh, it wasn’t Mr. Barrow,” Richard said. “It was the child.”

Lady Mary and Lady Grantham exchanged a look of confusion. “Which child?” Lady Grantham asked.

Realizing what they must have thought, Richard hastened to assure them, “Not Master George or Miss Sybil. The little boy downstairs. Thomas.”

“Thomas?” Lady Mary asked.

“Some relation of Mr. Barrow’s, I thought,” Richard said, now nearly as confused as they were. “Beyond the name, there’s a definite family resemblance. His son, perhaps?”

“Barrow can’t have a child,” Lady Mary said. “He--”

“Isn’t married,” her ladyship finished.

“Well, ladies, strictly speaking, it isn’t a requirement,” Richard pointed out. An illegitimate child seemed most likely, given how evasive everyone had been, but he really didn’t know. The child had said that his parents were Mr. and Mrs. Barrow, but he could have been coached to say that. “But perhaps it was a nephew, or a cousin. They didn’t say.”

Lady Grantham was shaking her head. “Anna definitely said that Mr. Barrow had had an accident.”

“And he certainly hasn’t asked permission to have a child of any description come to stay,” Lady Mary added. 

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Richard said. “He seems a healthy little boy of six—apart from the knock on his head, of course.”

Lady Mary said, “Six. That would be….”

“Just before he left for the war,” Lady Grantham said. “Perhaps they lost touch, and Barrow didn’t know.”

With a nod, Lady Mary said, “And if something’s happened to the mother, of course the child would have been sent to his father. Though given Barrow’s…well, perhaps he’s the sort of man to try anything once.”

“He must be afraid we’ll sack him,” Lady Grantham went on. “And he’s trying to make some sort of arrangements before we find out.”

“Papa won’t sack him,” Lady Mary said. “He needs him for the cricket.”

“Ladies,” Richard broke in. It was clear that he didn’t need to be here for this conversation. “If that’s all, I have a patient to check on.”

“Oh, of course, Dr. Clarkson. Thank you.”

He hurried off in the direction of Mrs. Whitlow’s house—case of lumbago—and left the two ladies deep in discussion of Mr. Barrow’s secret illegitimate son.

#

“No-no, Sybil,” Mrs. Bunn trilled. “We don’t _eat_ the pretty flowers. We look at them.”

Shaking his head, Thomas pried Miss Sybil’s chubby fingers away from a daffodil stem. Early in the walk, Thomas had been thinking that being a nanny must be a fairly soft job—if anyone gave you any lip, you could just threaten to spank them. But he was beginning to revise his opinion. Everything that caught Miss Sybil’s eye, she tried to stuff in her mouth, and meanwhile, if the pram stopped moving, Master George started to howl. Thomas looked longingly back at the house, where he could be polishing silver in peace. 

The situation suddenly became more urgent as they took a turn in the path and her ladyship and Lady Mary came into view, sitting on a bench and conversing earnestly. “I have to go back to the house,” Thomas said quickly.

“Why?” Mrs. Bunn demanded. “Do you need the pot?”

“ _No_.” Dropping Miss Sybil’s hand, he pointed.

Immediately, Miss Sybil set out at a lumbering, bowlegged run, saying, “Ga-gi!”

Thomas froze, unsure how to deal with this disaster. The situation worsened when Miss Sybil tripped, which set her to howling, and got the two ladies up off the bench. When Mrs. Bunn started hurrying over to Miss Sybil, Thomas decided his best course of action was to hide behind the pram. 

Unfortunately, he had momentarily forgotten that the occupant of the pram—who soon launched into a duet with Miss Sybil—was Lady Mary’s child. While Mrs. Bunn and her ladyship converged on Miss Sybil, Lady Mary continued to the pram. 

Oddly, she smiled down at Thomas while lifting the baby out of the pram. After a few moments of bouncing and humming, Master George quieted. “Good afternoon, Thomas,” Lady Mary said.

“My lady,” Thomas said cautiously.

“It’s so good of you to help Nanny with the little ones.”

_Surely_ she must have noticed there was something different about him. “Just trying to do my bit, my lady. In the circumstances.”

Smiling a little stiffly, Lady Mary turned to her ladyship and Mrs. Bunn, who were approaching, Mrs. Bunn carrying Miss Sybil. 

Her ladyship was saying, “—ran into Dr. Clarkson in the village. He explained.”

“Well that is a blessed relief, if you don’t mind my saying, my lady,” Mrs. Bunn said. “I hope you know I had no part in weaving this web of lies.”

“Of course not. But it’s so good of you to help.”

“I can’t have him in my nurseries,” Mrs. Bunn said quickly. “He’s too much older than the others, and it wouldn’t be right.”

“I understand completely,” her ladyship said, before Thomas could object to the suggestion that he belonged in _anyone’s_ nurseries. 

“I’m sure it won’t be long before Barrow makes some sort of more permanent arrangement.”

‘Permanent arrangement’? Thomas wondered what Dr. Clarkson had told them. Maybe whoever had explained the situation to him had left out the part about Sir Edmund. “There shouldn’t be any need for a permanent arrangement, my lady,” Thomas said. “Things should be back to normal soon.”

Her ladyship and Lady Mary exchanged glances. “We shouldn’t talk about it here,” Lady Mary said, putting George back into the pram. “Enjoy your walk.”

Thomas didn’t know how he could be expected to enjoy anything after an alarming statement like that. Let alone a _walk_.

#

Carson opened the door to her ladyship and Lady Mary, returned from their walk to the village. A few steps in the door, her ladyship paused. “Carson?”

“Yes, my lady?”

“Send Barrow up to the small library, please.”

Oh, dear. “Ah, my lady, Mr. Barrow is still….”

“I know,” she said with a tight smile. “We ran into Dr. Clarkson in the village. And into Mrs. Bunn and the children on our way back.”

“I see,” Carson said, swallowing hard. “My lady, I should apologize. I felt that his lordship should be the first to know.”

“I understand,” she said, her tone not particularly understanding. “We’ll discuss that later. Now I’d like to speak to Barrow.”

“I’ll send him up directly, my lady,” Carson said—because, after all, what else _could_ he say?

#

“Thomas!” Mrs. Hughes hurried over to him as soon as he stepped inside.

“Yes?” he asked, hoping that this might, somehow, not be terrible news. 

“Her ladyship wants to see you.”

So this was it, then. “I thought she might.”

“Apparently she’s found out.”

“Yes.” Thomas glanced down at himself. “I should change.” Even though she’d already seen him in his ill-fitting hall-boy’s suit, it wasn’t right for him to appear upstairs out of livery. If he _wasn’t_ about to be sacked, it just might be the last straw. 

“She’s been waiting almost a quarter of an hour already,” Mrs. Hughes said. 

Thomas hesitated, feeling a little sick. He shook his head. “No, I—” He stopped himself before he could say _don’t want to_. What did what he _wanted_ have to do with anything. “Sir Edmund is coming tonight,” he said instead. They had to let him stay that long. Long enough to find out if there was a cure. 

Mrs. Hughes misunderstood. “I know he is, and Carson’s in a right state about it, but the sooner we get this over with, the better. In hindsight, we should have told her immediately.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” Thomas pointed out. Not that Lady Grantham was likely to believe that. Or care. 

“I’ll explain that to her,” Mrs. Hughes said. 

“Good,” Thomas said, stepping away from her. 

“You still have to come.”

Damn. Thomas nodded, but didn’t move. 

With a sigh, Mrs. Hughes seized his hand. “Come along now.” She set off for the stairs.

Thomas went, since he had little choice between that and being dragged.

#

Elsie paused outside the library door to look Thomas over. The poor little mite was practically shaking, but his face was clean and his hair more-or-less combed—the parts that stuck out from under the bandage, at least. She supposed that was about the best they were going to do. “Ready?” she asked bracingly.

“No,” Thomas said. 

She opened the door anyway. Both Lady Grantham and Lady Mary were there—Lady Mary not being one to miss a spectacle, Elsie thought cynically.

“Mrs. Hughes,” Lady Grantham said. “We wanted to see Barrow.”

“Yes, my lady,” she said. “I thought I had better come as well. To help explain.”

“Very well,” her ladyship said slowly. “And…where is Barrow?”

Elsie glanced down at Thomas. No, he hadn’t run off.

“I wanted to discuss what’s to be done about….” Her ladyship looked significantly at Thomas.

Thomas, quite suddenly, burst into tears.

“Oh, dear,” Elsie said. “I think there may have been a misunderstanding…may I ask who you think this is?”

#

As the train pulled out of the station, the door to Robert’s first-class compartment rattled open. “Pardon me,” said the slightly out-of-breath man who had opened it. “Is there room in this compartment?”

Robert looked at the empty seats across from his own. He’d rather hoped to have the compartment to himself, but he hadn’t reserved it. “Certainly,” he said, and turned his attention back to his newspaper.

It was hard to concentrate on the news, though, as the new arrival got himself settled. In addition to being out of breath, he was slightly rumpled and carrying a bulging satchel and several brown-paper parcels, which he took considerable care arranging on the luggage rack and empty seats. Every time Robert thought the man had finally settled down, he’d pop up to rearrange his things again. After several minutes of this, Robert was sufficiently annoyed to lower his newspaper, clear his throat, and glare. “Ahem.”

The man looked over at him. “Oh, I say. Grantham, is that you?”

“Yes,” Robert said. The man did look vaguely familiar, but it took him a moment to place him. “Sir Edmund,” he said, relieved not to have to ask, since the man obviously recognized him. Robert had attended a few of his public lectures, before his enthusiasm for Egyptology had come to a swift and abrupt end, and they had been to a few of the same dinners and balls and so forth in the years since then. 

“What an astonishing coincidence,” said Sir Edmund.

“Indeed,” Robert said, though he had no idea why Sir Edmund would think so. Running into a distance acquaintance on a train was surely not more than mildly surprising. 

“Well,” Sir Edmund said, sitting down for the fifth or sixth time and taking a thermal flask out of his satchel. “Now I don’t have to worry about missing the station. Good show.”

“Hm,” Robert said, nodding. 

“Tea?” Sir Edmund continued, opening the flask. “I’ve only the one cup, I’m afraid, but we can take turns.”

“Ah, no, I’m fine. Thank you.”

Slurping his tea, Sir Edmund said something about getting down to work, and Robert dared hope that the idle conversation would end, and he could, with all courtesy, return to his newspaper. But the Egypotlogist went on talking as he delved into his satchel, saying, “The Sketch was very helpful indeed, but I do still have some questions.”

Robert could only assume that he was referring to the newspaper; perhaps he knew of Edith’s connection to it (though, it was to be hoped, not the full _extent_ of that connection), and thought Robert might be a source of inside information. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about that.”

Ignoring him, Sir Edmund dragged out a large, leather-bound tome and a smaller notebook or diary, swollen to twice its size with scraps of paper crammed between the pages. “Is the Eye of Horus motif like this?” he asked, showing Robert a picture in the book. “Or more like this?” He showed him a similar drawing in the notebook. 

Robert knew what an Eye of Horus was, of course—anyone with even a passing interest in Egyptology would recognize one—but he had no idea why Sir Edmund was showing them to him. “I wouldn’t really know,” he said. “I’m afraid I lost interest in all that some time ago.”

Sir Edmund looked at him quizzically, as though he couldn’t quite conceive of anyone losing interest in the mysteries of ancient Egypt. “But you still have it, of course.”

“I’ve kept a small collection.” He’d felt he had little choice, after what had happened. “But it was never a very distinguished one, and I haven’t looked at it in years.”

“You didn’t _look_ at it?”

There was no reason for him to sound so shocked, Robert thought. “Not recently.”

“Oh.” Sir Edmund closed the book slowly. “Well, all right. I suppose I’ll see it for myself when I get there.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The statuette,” Sir Edmund explained. “I’ll need to identify the region and period from which it originated, to begin researching how to reverse the curse.” His expression growing worried, he added, “Your butler _did_ say he kept the fragments.”

The fragments of _what_? Growing concerned, Robert fought to keep his voice level as he said, “Sir Edmund, either there has been a misunderstanding or you know something that I do not.”

#

“That’s _Thomas_?” Cora asked, looking at the child sobbing on the floor. “Thomas Barrow. The under-butler.”

“I’m afraid so,” Mrs. Hughes said. Bending over the child, she tried to pull him to his feet. “Now, now, Thomas, carrying on isn’t going to help anything.”

“But how did this happen?” The scenario she had imagined was somewhat improbable, given what they knew about Thomas, but this was even more unlikely.

Thomas, hiding his face against Mrs. Hughes’s apron, whimpered something about a cat and being sorry, in between sobs.

“He was cleaning in the Egyptian Room,” the housekeeper explained. “One of the artifacts was broken—a little cat. And this happened.” She indicated Thomas. “It must have been cursed.”

Cora shook her head. “But Lord Grantham assured me, when the girls were small, that he’d had everything examined for curses by an expert, and everything was perfectly safe.”

“It seems the expert was mistaken, my lady,” Mrs. Hughes said. 

He must have been. While it was very unfortunate for Thomas, Cora was secretly thankful that it hadn’t been one of the children who’d activated the curse—either her own daughters or George or little Sybil. Would they have disappeared entirely? 

“In hindsight, it was wrong of us not to tell you immediately,” Mrs. Hughes went on. “We thought it best to inform his lordship first, upon his return.”

“I quite agree,” Mary spoke up. “You should have told us.”

Cora agreed as well, but the sharpness of Mary’s tone seemed to frighten poor Thomas even more—the sobs that had started to taper off now returned with vigor. “Perhaps you should take Thomas back downstairs,” she said. “Once he’s…settled down, we can discuss this further.”

Thomas pulled away from Mrs. Hughes, yelping, “No!”

“Thomas!” Mrs. Hughes exclaimed. 

Thomas looked deeply mortified, and for a second Cora could see traces of the inscrutable under-butler in the frightened child. After mopping his eyes with his sleeve, he squared his shoulders and said, “I’m sorry, my lady. If I could just _explain_.”

With a glance at Mrs. Hughes, who was looking decidedly uncomfortable, Cora said, “All right. Explain.”

“I didn’t _mean_ to break it, my lady. And I wasn’t being careless. It was just an accident.”

“We know, Thomas,” Mrs. Hughes said kindly. “And I don’t think we need to trouble her ladyship with all that.”

Sniffling, Thomas nodded and moved on. “And I can still do my job, whatever Mr. Carson thinks. I just—” Here he touched the large and somewhat alarming bandage that covered most of his forehead. “This was an accident, too. I have to be more careful. But I’ll be back to normal soon. I’m sure I will. When Sir Edmund—” He stopped short and looked up at Mrs. Hughes. “Does she know about Sir Edmund yet?”

Mrs. Hughes sighed. “I was coming to that.”

“There’s an Egyptologist coming,” Thomas told her earnestly. “Sir Edmund McGuffin. Mr. Carson wrote to him. So everything’s under control, really. There’s no need to _decide_ anything.”

“I see,” Cora said, although she was not entirely sure that she did. Although she had never met the man, she recognized the name—Sir Edmund had written several books on Egypt, and was much sought-after by hostesses planning balls or dinners with an Egyptian theme. Why Thomas would expect him to come _here_ , she had no idea.

“About Sir Edmund, my lady,” Mrs. Hughes said.

“Yes?”

“We wrote asking for his help. In fact, it was his butler whom Mr. Carson wrote to—they’re acquainted, you see. We hoped that Sir Edmund might be kind enough to provide some advice. Instead he offered to come and investigate.”

“That’s very generous of him,” Cora said. “I hope he _can_ help. We’ll invite him to stay here, of course.” They didn’t really have much choice—if one of the servants had been injured in the course of his or her duties, they would make appropriate arrangements for care. This was not much different—if a great deal more disconcerting. 

“That’s the thing, my lady.” Mrs. Hughes folded her hands in front of herself, looking sheepish. “He set out before we’d even received his reply.”

“He’s coming on the three o’clock train,” Thomas added. “We didn’t ask him to; he just came.”

How had they planned on explaining _that_? Cora wondered. “In that case, we had better prepare a room for him, and make sure we’re ready to have a guest for dinner.” She was proud of herself for how calmly she was able to convey the instructions. 

“Yes, my lady,” the housekeeper said. “Everything is—” She glanced at Thomas. “Under control.”

So they had gone about preparing for this uninvited guest, even though they hadn’t felt it necessary to inform her that he was coming. Cora took a deep breath. Very well. “I’ll look forward to hearing what he has to say. Let’s try not to have any more _accidents_ before then, shall we?”

#

Robert read the letter that Carson had written to Sir Edmund’s butler, with a growing sense of dismay. He had been reliably assured that the cat statuette—originally one of a pair—was inert. If it hadn’t been, he’d have gotten rid of it. He shuddered to think what could have happened if it had been broken by one of the grandchildren, or the girls when they were small. As it was, he felt sorry for poor Barrow—Robert knew, with a high degree of certainty, how distressing this sort of thing could be. The letter indicated that he was still himself, mentally, but it had been written several days ago. That probably wasn’t the case anymore.

“You didn’t know about any of this?” Sir Edmund asked as he handed back the letter.

“Ah…no.” Not about this incident, at least. 

“You must think I’m a frightful bounder, inviting myself to your house. I rather assumed I’d be expected.”

“No, no, it’s quite all right,” Robert said, truthfully. “I’m sure we’ll be grateful for your assistance.” He didn’t remember the details of how the damage caused by the other statuette of the pair had been reversed; if he _had_ been home, he likely would have had no better idea than to write to Professor Waterston, who had assisted with the earlier matter. But he’d been the one who claimed the other statuette was harmless, which it quite clearly was not. “I’ve been away from Downton for a few days; I imagine Lady Grantham is expecting you.”

Reassured, Sir Edmund sat back in his seat. “Good,” he said. “It’s usually best to get this sort of thing straightened out as quickly as possible—the victim’s condition sometimes deteriorates. If your man Barrow has begun to become childish in his thinking, getting him to participate in a complex ritual conducted in a foreign language may be difficult.”

“Indeed,” Robert said, remembering.

“But it could be worse,” Sir Edmund added cheerfully. “If he’d been turned into a _cat_ , well….”

Robert shuddered.

#

After drinking a cup of milky tea in Mrs. Hughes’s parlour, Thomas finally managed to stop crying. He would have stopped sooner, except when he began to calm down, he realized that he had added crying in front of the quality, contradicting her ladyship, and letting the cat out of the bag about Sir Edmund to his already long list of misdeeds. The fact that her ladyship had taken the news well and he wasn’t sacked _yet_ wasn’t much comfort. 

“There, now,” Mrs. Hughes said. “Do you feel better?”

“Not really.” He had a headache, and his eyes felt raw. 

“What in heaven’s name has gotten into you?”

He shook his head. He felt like he was losing his _mind_ , was what was wrong. More and more often, he seemed to be reacting to things as though he really _was_ a child. But he certainly couldn’t say that. It was more important than ever to act as though he had everything in hand. “I don’t know,” he said instead. “All this is very strange.” He gestured at himself in explanation.

“I’m sure it must be,” Mrs. Hughes agreed. 

But it wasn’t any excuse for letting standards slip; he knew that. Instead of saying so, he said, “I should get back to polishing the silver.”

“Not just yet,” she said. “It’s nearly time for lunch.”

Thomas glanced at the mantelpiece clock. It certainly was—though it seemed like it should be dinner time, at least. If not bedtime. 

At lunch, Carson started talking about the upstairs dinner. At one point, Jimmy said, “Of course, Mr. Carson. We’ll get everything set up before we go.”

“Go?” Carson asked, raising his eyebrows. Thomas would have laughed at how funny he looked, if he didn’t find Carson a bit intimidating.

“The dance,” Jimmy said. “It’s tonight.”

“Circumstances,” Carson said, “have changed.”

“But you _said_ we could go!”

“We’ve already bought the tickets,” Alfred added.

“What about us?” asked one of the maids. 

“As long as Sir Edmund’s room is ready and all your work is done, you girls may go,” Mrs. Hughes said. “Mind you all walk there and back _together_.” Alfred and Jimmy looked at her imploringly. “As for you, it’s Mr. Carson’s decision.”

They turned to Carson, who was much less receptive to pleading expressions. He shook his head. “We have a guest coming. I’ll need you to serve at dinner.” He added grudgingly, “Since you have bought the tickets, I suppose you might go after dinner is over and the table has been cleared.”

“Then can we stay later?” Jimmy asked.

“No.”

“Then what would be the point?” Jimmy threw up his hands. “We’d be there half an hour.”

“As I’m not certain what the point is in any case, I couldn’t tell you,” Carson answered. “You may go after you have finished with your duties and return by midnight, or you may stay home.”

Thomas was quite certain that in the old days, both he and William would have had the sense to give up now, but Jimmy kept pressing. “I don’t see what’s different. It’s only one extra person.”

“I was _expecting_ to have Mr. Barrow.”

Thomas hadn’t realized that was the problem. He couldn’t have everyone thinking that the reason for this disruption—which Jimmy and Alfred both resented—was that he couldn’t do his job. “But you do.”

All heads turned to look at him.

“Have me,” he explained. “Now that the ladies know about what happened. There’s no reason for me to keep out of sight.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Mrs. Hughes said. 

But Carson hadn’t spoken yet, so Thomas went on, “I know it’ll look odd.” Might as well admit that, since it was undeniable. “But Sir Edmund knows why he’s here, after all. I’m not sure we need to make the young people miss out on their bit of fun.”

Carson hesitated. “We’ll discuss the matter later.”

Jimmy grinned, as though he thought he’d won something. Thomas didn’t—he knew he hadn’t won anything. Not yet.

#

After lunch, Elsie met with Mr. Carson to discuss the latest developments. She’d expected Thomas to show up as well, intent on arguing for his absurd plan that he be allowed to wait at table that evening. At first she was relieved when he didn’t—until she started to wonder what he was getting up to. 

She had barely started explaining the meeting with her ladyship—she was having some difficulty working her way up to the point where she’d have to explain that Thomas had wept in her ladyship’s presence for a quarter of an hour—when she interrupted herself to say, “I really do think we should find out where Thomas is.”

Mr. Carson agreed immediately. “Heaven help us if he’s planning another _surprise_.”

After checking the most likely spots, and finding no sign of Thomas, Elsie returned to the servants’ hall and asked the group assembled there, “Does anyone know where Mr. Barrow has gone?”

Anna looked up from the slip she was mending. “I saw him go off somewhere with Jimmy and Alfred. I’m not sure where. I’d have stopped him if he was by himself, but I thought he’d be all right with them.”

Elsie certainly hoped so—a sentiment Mr. Carson echoed when she reported back to him. “I’ve told James that he isn’t to be left unsupervised,” Mr. Carson said. “I know he believes he can carry on as usual, but he’s getting…whimsical.”

“It seems to come and go,” Elsie said. “At times he seems his usual self, and at others….” She shook her head. “Perhaps that’s what happens, in these cases. Sir Edmund might be able to tell us.”

“I don’t see how I can rely on him to wait at table,” Mr. Carson went on. 

“It seems it would be difficult for him to manage, physically,” Elsie agreed. “Even leaving aside the other matter.”

“He might be able to manage the sauces, but dinner begins well after his bedtime.” Mr. Carson folded his hands. “That’s decided, then. Alfred and James will have to miss the dance.”

“I don’t see what choice there is.” A disappointment for the lads, of course—both they and the maids had been talking of little else for weeks—but there it was. There would be other dances. 

They had moved on to discussing the best plan for meeting Lord Grantham and Sir Edmund at the station, and for breaking the news to Lord Grantham, when there was a knock at the door. 

“Yes?” Mr. Carson said. 

The door opened, and Jimmy’s and Thomas’s heads peeked in. From where she was sitting, Elsie could see Alfred lurking in the corridor. 

“What is it?” Carson asked testily.

The door opened further, and Thomas stepped in, with Jimmy at his heels. He was dressed in his livery—he must have gone upstairs to change. Elsie was relieved that there was such an innocent explanation for his absence. “We have a plan,” Thomas said, looking up and over his shoulder at Jimmy. 

“Another…surprise?” Mr. Carson asked, sounding as though he were afraid to hear the answer.

“No,” Thomas said. “I thought I had better tell you about it in advance this time, since the last one didn’t turn out so well.”

“That’s very good, Thomas,” Elsie said. “I think you made the right choice.”

Mr. Carson cleared his throat. “Er. Yes, Thomas. What is it you have in mind?”

“I thought I’d serve the upstairs luncheon,” he explained. “As I usually do.”

“He’s tall enough, Mr. Carson,” Jimmy added. “We checked.”

“I see,” said Carson. “And is there another component to this plan?”

“Well,” Jimmy said, “we thought that if it goes well--”

“ _When_ it goes well,” Thomas interrupted.

“Right. When it goes well, you might reconsider about this evening.” Jimmy regarded Mr. Carson with an alert and eager expression.

Glancing over at Elsie, Thomas added, “I’m quite certain I’m up to it. I’m feeling much better now, really.”

Elsie was reminded that she still hadn’t told Mr. Carson about Thomas’s outburst with Lady Grantham—but it hardly seemed appropriate to do so now, with the others looking on. 

Thomas went on, “And I think it’s important for them to see that I can still carry out my duties.”

“I understand that, Mr. Barrow,” Carson said. “But….” He trailed off, evidently realizing that there was no delicate way to say ‘But you can’t.’ He settled on, “I’m not sure it’s wise.”

“What could go wrong?” Jimmy asked—unwisely, in Elsie’s opinion. 

“I don’t wish to find out,” Mr. Carson answered.

“Nothing will go wrong,” Thomas said. “I’ll be very, very careful.”

“I’m sure that you will,” Carson began. 

Before he could get to the “however,” Jimmy said, “Thank you, Mr. Carson!”

Thomas added, “Don’t worry, Mr. Carson, I won’t let you down! It’s almost one o’clock; we’d better get to the kitchen.”

They hurried out, leaving Mr. Carson looking stunned. “What just happened?” he asked plaintively.

#

Cora was more than a little taken aback when she and Mary went in to luncheon and found Barrow standing by the sideboard. He was dressed in livery now, rather than the suit he’d been wearing earlier. Did Carson and Mrs. Hughes know he was there? It seemed wildly unlikely.

Mary, apparently having similar concerns, said, “Barrow, are you….”

After waiting a suitable time for her to finish the sentence, the very small under-butler said, “Quite well, my lady. Thank you.”

There seemed nothing more to say after that—evidently they were pretending everything was quite normal. Stiff upper lip, and all that. Cora hesitated to protest—it seemed one of those things that would reveal to her daughter _and_ the servants that, even after all these years, she was still not a pukka Englishwoman. So she made ordinary, if a little stilted, conversation with Mary as they ate the fruit salad. In due course, Barrow came round to remove the dishes. She wasn’t entirely sure how that would go, but he was just tall enough to reach them. 

When he emerged from the servery with the next course, though, she had to fight to maintain a neutral expression. The child was not precisely struggling under the weight of the serving tray—it was only two cups of bouillon, which she supposed even a six-year-old could manage—but it just looked _wrong_. After he’d returned to the servery, she confided to Mary, “I feel like a villainess out of Dickens. I don’t know what Carson could be thinking.”

“It might not be so bad without the head wound,” Mary whispered back. 

#

Thomas had to admit that at his current size, waiting at table was more challenging than he expected it to be. He still knew what to do, and he _could_ reach the table, but it was awkward. The first course and bouillon went smoothly enough, since for those he only had to carry two portions, but the hot dish, chicken croquettes, was a bit heavy—Mrs. Patmore hadn’t been sure, when she started cooking, whether Mr. Branson would be having his luncheon at the house or not, and in any case, she hated for the amount to seem stingy. He found himself steadying the dish with both hands as he carried it up the stairs, but of course that would not do in the dining room. Before leaving the servery, he made sure it was balanced properly on his left hand. 

There was a bit of a knack to turning the wrist outward, so that you could hold the dish within reach of the person being served, without standing closer to them than you ought. As it turned out, if you were three and a half feet tall, you also had to manage the trick while holding the serving dish at shoulder height. Her ladyship, fortunately, helped herself to the croquettes quickly, allowing him to step back and hold the dish at a more comfortable height. Thomas surreptitiously massaged his wrist with his free hand while he circled around the table to Lady Mary. 

It was while he was serving Lady Mary that things went really wrong. She, apparently deciding that two croquettes were not enough but three would be too many, took her time using the serving spoon to divide one in half. He could feel his wrist beginning to wobble, and when she exerted a fraction more pressure against the dish, his wrist buckled. The dish slid to the right and toppled. Time seemed to stand still as an avalanche of chicken croquettes and sauce descended on the table, the plate, and Lady Mary’s lap.

After that, several things happened in quick succession. Lady Mary cried out in pain. As Thomas began to stammer out an apology, she—understandably eager to rid herself of a lap full of hot chicken—leapt to her feet, pushing her chair back in the process. Thomas was in the path of the chair, and he was not sure whether it fell onto him, or he stumbled over it. But the result was that he and the chair went down in a tangle as Lady Mary stood over him with cream sauce all down her front.

It was onto this scene that Mr. Carson entered, at a trot.

#

Carson had not expected that the luncheon service would go entirely smoothly, but he had not, in his wildest fears, expected it to go quite this badly. Not that he was entirely certain just what had happened. From the state of the tablecloth and Lady Mary’s dress, it was clear that the main course had been spilled, but how that led to Thomas being sprawled on the floor—or, indeed, if it was the other way around—he hesitated to speculate.

Finding his voice, he said, “Lady Mary, are you all right?”

She looked down at herself and raised her hands, which were coated in the cream sauce that was served with the chicken croquettes, as though she had been scraping herself off. “Just a bit scalded,” she said. “But no permanent harm done, I don’t think.” Picking up a napkin and wiping her hands, she added, “This frock will never be the same.”

As Thomas started to sit up, looking dazed, Lady Grantham said, “What about Barrow? I hope he didn’t hit his head again.”

Thomas shook his head, whether in answer or in confusion, Carson wasn’t sure. He was eerily silent—neither making haste to apologize and rectify the situation, nor indulging in childish hysterics. 

Lady Mary looked down at him. “Did you?” To Carson, she explained, “I’m afraid I knocked him over. I…got up rather hastily.”

“I’m all right,” Thomas said, his voice a strained whisper pitched toward the dining room carpet. “My lady.”

“Good.” Lady Mary looked relieved. “I’m going to change out of…this.” She indicated her ruined dress. “If you could send Anna up, when you have a chance.”

“Of course, my lady.” Carson looked down at Thomas. He wished he would _get up_ , if he wasn’t hurt. “I must apologize for this…incident. I had no idea…”

“Oh, Carson, of course you didn’t,” Lady Mary said, and sailed out.

The other three of them—Carson, Thomas, and Lady Grantham—remained frozen in a sort of tableau vivant of awkwardness. Finally, her ladyship broke the impasse by looking down at her plate—which had come through the disaster unscathed—and picking up her fork, with an air of determination. As she applied the fork to a chicken croquette, she said, “Perhaps I’ll have dessert and coffee in the drawing room, if that’s easier.”

#

Thomas made his way downstairs, somehow, with Mr. Carson hard on his heels. He listened with numb detachment as Carson ordered Alfred and James to go deal with the mess in the dining room, and Anna to attend to Lady Mary. “And _you_ ,” he said, rounding on Thomas. 

Before Carson could say what he wanted Thomas to do, Mrs. Hughes intervened. “I think Thomas had better go and get cleaned up as well.”

Looking down at himself, Thomas observed that his livery, while not as thoroughly smeared as Lady Mary’s dress, was somewhat the worse for chicken croquette sauce. 

Glancing at Mrs. Hughes, Carson said, “Do you think you can manage that, without another…accident?”

Thomas nodded and, without a word, trudged back up the steps, certain that life as he knew it was over. He had insisted on waiting at table to prove that he could carry out his duties, and instead, had proven—conclusively—that he could not. He had really _thought_ he could. He still thought that he _should_ have been able to. Another sign of his weakening grip on reason, perhaps. 

He really _did_ need a nanny. Or something. He couldn’t work, like this. Couldn’t even look after himself. If Sir Edmund couldn’t put him back to normal, and fast—

He didn’t have the faintest idea what he’d do. 

But even if he was returned to his adult self—and if his mind went back to normal, which he supposed there was no guarantee it would—he couldn’t imagine he’d be kept around at Downton, after the absolute shambles of the last few days. He certainly hadn’t done anything to redeem himself for breaking the statuette in the first place. Everything he’d tried had only made things worse.

The idea of coming up with a new plan, a better plan, was tempting, but Thomas was capable of learning from his mistakes. No more plans, he told himself firmly as he changed into the hall-boy suit. The best thing he could do for himself was keep out of everyone’s way. 

If they couldn’t _find_ him, they couldn’t sack him.

#

“I don’t like to criticize,” her ladyship said when Carson took dessert to her in the drawing room, “but don’t you think it might be best to relieve Thomas of his duties until he’s back to normal?”

“Yes, my lady,” Carson said firmly. He should have done so yesterday. And he _certainly_ should have put his foot down on this nonsense about waiting at table. He’d only hesitated because he thought Thomas might make a scene. And make a scene he had. “I’ll make certain he stays out of trouble from now on.” 

“I’d suggest sending him up to the nursery, but I think Nanny might stage a revolt,” her ladyship said regretfully.

Mrs. Hughes had said much the same thing, earlier in the day. They’d just have to confine him to the servants’ hall, Carson decided. And have someone there to watch him at all times. Thomas wouldn’t like it, but the rest of them would just have to put up with Thomas not liking it. With any luck at all, he would be returned to normal soon, and they’d be able to forget that this nightmare had ever occurred. 

#

Elsie kept an eye out for Thomas’s return. She could tell he’d been upset by the incident, and by Mr. Carson’s reaction—anyone would be, and Thomas was under a great deal of strain at the moment. She thought someone had better talk to him and calm him down, and in the absence of any better candidate, it would have to be her. 

But he didn’t return, and by the time Anna had come back down from Lady Mary’s room to try to do something about the ruined frock, Elsie was starting to worry. It shouldn’t take him longer than Lady Mary did to change his clothes. Not even if he got distracted, as small boys sometimes did. She thought about sending one of the footmen up to check on him, but they were both occupied with helping Mr. Carson deal with the mess in the dining room. 

Perhaps, she thought, Thomas was there, too. That must be it—helping with the cleanup was likely to be within his present abilities, and as concerned as he was with showing that he could carry on, he was likely to have insisted on doing so. 

But when Mr. Carson came down, he was alone. “Where’s Thomas?” she asked—perhaps a little too abruptly, given Mr. Carson’s expression of surprise and affront.

“He isn’t down here?”

She shook her head. “I thought he must be with you.”

“He isn’t,” Mr. Carson said tightly. He looked up and down the corridor, as though expecting to see Thomas lurking there. “Perhaps he’s done the sensible thing, for once, and stayed in his room.” But he didn’t sound like he believed it. “I’ll check.”

“I’ll go with you.”

As they climbed the stairs, Mr. Carson outlined his plan for dealing with Thomas “for the duration,” as he put it. As much as Elsie knew Thomas would dislike it, she had to agree that humoring him in his determination to carry on as normal was not working. “He can polish the silver if he likes, but he’ll do it in the servants’ hall, where someone can watch him,” Mr. Carson finished. “No more ‘surprises.’ Or ‘plans.’”

But when they reached the men’s quarters, they found that they had a worse problem than breaking the news to Thomas. Thomas wasn’t in his room—they checked in the corners and under the bed, in case he was hiding. Hurriedly, they checked the rest of the corridor—the other bedrooms, as well as the bathroom and lavatory. Apart from his livery hanging on the towel rack—the stains rather clumsily sponged—they found no sign of him. 

“We must find him,” Elsie said. He’d already managed to injure himself within earshot of the rest of the servants; she had visions of him bleeding to death in some little-used corner of the house.

Mr. Carson agreed, saying, “There’s no telling what kind of havoc he could wreak unsupervised.”

They moved on to searching the servants’ areas downtairs, the Egyptian room, and—on Jimmy’s suggestion—Lord Grantham’s dressing room. But those places, which they all agreed were the most likely, similarly showed no trace of the tiny under-butler.

The next step would have to be a systematic search of the whole house—which would take quite a while, even bringing the whole staff into it. But as they met in the servants’ hall to organize the search parties, Alfred suggested something even more alarming. “Maybe he’s run away from home.”

Everyone stopped what they were doing to look at him.

“Kids do, y’know,” he said, looking a little embarrassed. “When they think they’re in trouble.”

Searching the entire house was a daunting enough task; including the outside world as well made it downright unmanageable. “We’ll have to involve the outside staff,” Elsie said. “The gardeners can search the grounds, and the chauffeur can check the village.”

With obvious reluctance, Mr. Carson agreed. “I’ll…explain the situation to them.”

#

“Mr. Barrow?” Jimmy’s voice called. “Thomas? Are you in here?”

Thomas froze in his hiding place, like a rabbit that sees the shadow of a hawk. After retreating to Downton’s expansive attics—the final resting place for centuries’ worth of worn-out furniture, outdated clothing, musty books, and similar detritus—he had spent a bit of time happily exploring, until it occurred to him that he might, eventually, be missed. He’d found a sheltered nook between an old wardrobe and the sloping wall, near enough to a window that he could see what he was about. Some moth-eaten brocaded draperies made a comfortable enough cushion for sitting on, and there were enough extras to make a bed, if needed—Thomas was a bit hazy on exactly how long he planned to inhabit his hideaway. 

Now, he listened warily as Jimmy poked around the outer reaches of the attic, cursing as he tripped over a tea-chest full of straw and china that Thomas had left out on the floor near the stairs. 

That could have been a clue, if Jimmy was just a little bit cleverer. But he wasn’t. After a minute or two of looking around, he left, closing the door behind him.

Once Thomas was certain he was gone for good, he crept out to put the tea chest back where he’d found it. 

#

It was with a certain amount of foreboding that Robert realized that the driver, Jenkins, had not expected to be picking up Sir Edmund at the station. “My lord?” he said, looking blank, when Robert told him to help Sir Edmund collect his baggage. 

“He’s traveling without a valet,” Robert explained, avoiding the question of why Bates wasn’t helping—he didn’t know if Bates’s limp had ceased to be a sore point or not. 

Jenkins said, “But I thought--” Before Robert could learn what he had thought, the man cut himself off and said, “Yes, my lord.” 

That was troubling. Being a husband and father of daughters, Robert had accustomed himself to the fact that there would always be things going on in his house of which he knew nothing, but Jenkins ought to have known he was meeting a guest as well as Robert himself. 

Bates arrived with Robert’s luggage before Jenkins and Sir Edmund. “It seems we’ve missed a bit of excitement,” Robert said as Bates loaded the cases onto the back of the car. He wondered if Anna, or someone, had written or telephoned Bates with the news. 

“My lord?”

Apparently he wasn’t the last to know, this time. He filled Bates in. 

When he’d finished, Bates said, “I don’t know whether to say I’m glad or sorry that I missed that, my lord.”

“We haven’t missed it entirely,” Robert pointed out. “I expect it will take at least a day or two for Sir Edmund to arrange for the reversal.” In his hazy memories, the prior incident had lasted weeks, if not months, but he knew that he was mistaken. He’d been back to normal well in time for the wedding.

#

Entering Downton Abbey through the back door with his and Lord Grantham’s cases, John Bates paused to greet his wife.

He could still sometimes hardly believe it that young, beautiful, lively Anna was now Mrs. Bates. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Bates,” he said with mock solemnity. Then, seeing that the servants’ corridor was sparsely populated—unusually so, for this time of day—he bent his head to give her a quick, chaste kiss. Although they were man and wife, they were expected to avoid over-familiarity while at work. 

After the kiss, Anna said, “Just wait till you hear what happened.”

“I have,” John answered. He’d briefly considered pretending he hadn’t and using the pretense of ignorance to wind Thomas up somehow, but had decided against it. “His lordship ran into Sir Edmund on the train.”

“Oh,” she said, seeming both disappointed and relieved. “Well, that will take one care off Mr. Carson’s mind. But you won’t know the latest.”

“What?”

“He’s gone missing.”

“Mr. Carson?”

“No, Thomas.” Glancing quickly to either side, she added, “I know you have to get upstairs, but I think you’d better hear this first.”

#

After leaving Sir Edmund in Carson’s capable hands, Robert went up to his dressing room. He’d made it there before Bates—just as well, under the circumstances. Going to the wardrobe, he rummaged through the top shelf until he found what he was looking for, wedged at the back: a small box containing a statuette of Baast, the Egyptian cat goddess. 

It was still in one piece, though the cracks where it had been inexpertly mended all those years ago were plainly visible. Under the statuette was a paper envelope, which he knew contained a bit of papyrus, also cracked and reassembled on a sheet of cardboard. The box had clearly not been disturbed, so the recent accident _had_ involved the other one. Robert knew he should have hidden it away, along with this one. 

Replacing the lid on the box, Robert left it on the dresser. Sir Edmund might need to see it. And, he realized with some dread, he was going to have to tell Cora. By the time their relationship had grown sufficiently close that it occurred to him to do so, the incident had seemed sufficiently remote that there was no need to dredge it up. Over and done with—and, despite Rosemund’s machinations, there had been no photographic evidence to explain. But now that the subject had arisen, he didn’t have much choice.

#

When Elsie came upon Anna explaining all of the recent events to Mr. Bates, she could not disapprove, even if she suspected that Mr. Carson might. If prior experience was anything to go by, Bates would tell his lordship everything that he knew. Trying to keep the downstairs disarray a secret from the family had—in Thomas’s words of earlier that day—not turned out so well. Any additional resources that his lordship was able to bring to bear would be more than welcome.

But then Mr. Bates said something that surprised her. “Has anyone checked near our place?”

“Why would he go _there_?” Anna asked. 

“I don’t know,” Mr. Bates admitted. “He turned up there last year, when he was about to be sent away. Lurking in the shadows and talking about how he envied me. It was just a thought.” He shrugged and turned to pick up Lord Grantham’s suitcase.

“It’s hardly the same thing,” Anna said. “It isn’t his own fault this time, and he isn’t about to be sacked.”

But suddenly, Elsie understood. For the last few days, Thomas had insisted on doing more work than anyone wanted him to, and when else had he _ever_ done that? Several occasions sprang to mind, and all of them were times when Thomas had been in very real danger of unemployment. The rest of the time, he was a decent enough worker, but was as willing to take an unexpected holiday as anyone who wasn’t Mr. Carson. “Now that you mention it,” she said slowly, “I’m not entirely certain he knows that.” 

#

“Apparently the situation has gotten a bit worse since Mr. Carson wrote to Sir Edmund,” Bates reported, when he finally joined Robert in the dressing room. 

That was not precisely a surprise. “How so?”

“Well, the very latest is that no one quite knows where Thomas is at the moment. The whole staff has been searching for him for the last couple of hours.” Bates went on to explain the adventures of the last few days, as he laid out a country suit. To his surprise, Robert had been quite far from being the last to know—in fact, Cora and Mary had only heard about the situation that morning. Carson had decided to keep it from them, for reasons that Robert could empathize with even while he did not entirely understand them. 

And as Robert had expected, Thomas hadn’t remained mentally himself for long. As he’d also expected, Thomas had not admitted to the regression, having insisted on carrying out his duties. The predictable results of this had included bodily injury, a minor dining-room disaster, and Thomas’s aforementioned disappearance. “Mrs. Hughes reckons he’s run away or gone into hiding because he thinks he’s in trouble,” Bates finished. 

“Yes,” Robert said. “That makes sense.” From his own experience of regression, he remembered doing things that he knew full well were irrational or socially unforgivable coming from a grown man, but lacking the mental equipment to either refrain from doing them or to deal with the consequences. At one point, utterly convinced he’d be sent to the marital altar as a five-year-old, and understandably terrified at the prospect, he’d decided to run away and become a pirate. It was only after returning to normal that he’d realized that if the situation had not been resolved in time, someone would have had the forethought to postpone the wedding with some plausible excuse. Mama, likely, would have come up with something. 

“Does it, my lord?” Bates asked. 

Robert considered explaining, but he rather thought he ought to tell Cora first. “In a way. I suppose you’ll be joining in the search?”

“I expect I had better. They’ll have to start over—the first time, they were assuming he wouldn’t mind being found. If he’s deliberately hiding, we might have to look in every corner to find him.”

Robert nodded, accepting the necktie that Bates held out to him. “I’ll see what I can do to assist Sir Edmund; he’s anxious to get started.” It did not seem appropriate to join in the search himself, though he did plan on having a word with Thomas, eventually. “Perhaps we’ll have some good news for Thomas once he’s found.”

And he would speak to Sir Edmund, Robert resolved, picking up the box from the dresser. But first, Cora.

#

The worst part of it all, Jimmy thought as he stomped through Downton’s upper reaches, was that there was absolutely no chance of going to that dance now. Even if they did find Thomas soon, Mr. Carson wasn’t going to let him serve at dinner after this debacle. 

To be fair, he did know that the situation was not, precisely, Thomas’s fault. He hadn’t _wanted_ to be transformed into a child, and all of the other problems had followed from that. But he was getting a bit tired of how the things Thomas didn’t choose always seemed to fall on the shoulders of one Jimmy Kent.

Well, only one example sprang to mind, other than the current situation, but that was enough to seem like a pattern. 

He wandered through the picture gallery, full of Crawley ancestors. It didn’t look like Thomas was in there—the gallery was a long room with little furniture—but there was a sofa at the other end, facing the wrong way. He might have decided to have a kip. If he’d covered as much of the house as Jimmy had, he’d need one. 

But he wasn’t there. The gallery was the last of the rooms he’d been assigned to search, so he began the long trek back to the servants’ hall, hoping to get a cup of tea, but figuring he’d probably end up with a new list of rooms to search instead.

As it turned out, it was a bit worse than that. “You cannot possibly have searched the attics thoroughly,” Mr. Carson said, looking down his nose at him.

Jimmy had to admit he hadn’t. “They’re huge! I looked around, and called out.”

“He may be hiding,” Mr. Carson said. 

“Why would he do that?”

“Mr. Barrow,” Carson reminded him, “is not precisely _rational_ at the moment. You’ll have to search the attics again—and any other places you neglected to search closely.”

Jimmy sighed. “All on me own? What about Alfred?”

“Alfred is searching the cellars.”

At least that assignment was no better than his. 

#

“ _When_ did this happen?” Cora asked, clearly struggling to hold back laughter.

Robert supposed he should be glad she found it funny; he’d been unsure whether she’d be angry that he hadn’t mentioned it before. “Shortly before we were married.”

“And you were….” She held out her hand about three feet from the floor.

“Yes. Mama thought I was about five.”

Cora studied him for a moment, a smile dancing on her lips. “Well,” she finally said, “you must have found a way to reverse it. Good news for Thomas, I suppose.”

“Yes, rather. I don’t remember the details, but it wasn’t terribly complicated. I’m sure Sir Edmund will be able to reconstruct the process.” He added, “Let’s not be too hard on Carson for not explaining the situation earlier. It’s difficult to find a way to raise such a peculiar subject.”

Cora nodded, but said, “I don’t know what he was thinking, allowing Thomas to serve luncheon.”

“Apparently Thomas insisted on it. I quite understand—the experience is disconcerting. One wants to…deny the effects.”

After speaking with Cora, Robert went to the library, where Sir Edmund was already at work. “—soak it in a solution to soften the papyrus,” he was saying to Carson as Robert came in. He listed a number of ingredients, saying of one item, “Any chemist should have it, if you haven’t any on hand.”

“I’ll check, sir,” Carson said. 

“Meanwhile, I’d like to speak to the man who was…affected. I have one or two questions about the account.”

“Ah,” Carson said, with a glance at Robert. “My lord.”

“He’s not turned up yet?” Robert asked, to let him know that he already knew. 

“No, my lord,” Carson said. To Sir Edmund, he explained, “Mr. Barrow has gone missing.”

Sir Edmund, who was bent over the statuette, straightened to look at him. “Has there been mental deterioration?”

“Yes,” Carson said, with a grave nod.

“That isn’t necessarily a bad sign,” Robert noted. “Is it?”

“No, not necessarily,” Sir Edmund said. “I’ll just work on the papyrus, then, until he’s found.”

“Before you go, Carson,” Robert added, seeing that the butler was turning to go, “have you sent anyone to the railway station, to ask if he’s been seen there?”

“No, my lord,” Carson said. “I shall do so.”

“Yes, do,” Robert said, thinking of pirates. “Make sure that the agent is instructed on no account to sell him a ticket.” The ticket agent of thirty years ago had not needed to be told to prevent Robert from doing so, but in these lax times, who knew? 

“I’ll attend to the matter immediately, my lord,” Carson said, and withdrew. 

#

Thomas was growing bored. He’d occupied himself for a while by arranging the lighter boxes and objects of furniture to further conceal his hiding place, and then by looking at an album of picture postcards that he’d found during the previous project, but he was finished with those now. He was also growing hungry—a glance at his pocket watch revealed that it was well past tea-time. 

And well past the time Sir Edmund was slated to arrive. Thomas wondered if he had started the investigation yet. Perhaps Thomas ought to go downstairs and find out—but no, he decided, it was far too early for there to be any result. Quite likely Sir Edmund had wanted to have his own tea before starting. Best to wait until things were well underway before he showed himself. 

He had just reached this decision when the attic door creaked open again. “Thomas?”

It was Jimmy’s voice. Why on Earth was he looking for him? And _twice_? Surely he’d realized that there was no way Mr. Carson would allow Thomas to wait at table, and Jimmy to go to the dance, after what had happened. 

#

Opening the attic door, Jimmy flicked on the electric torch he’d brought with him, for looking into corners. He had to admit, if Thomas really _was_ bent on hiding, the attic would be a good place for it. There was a whole warren of small, inter-connected rooms, all crammed positively full of dusty old things. “Thomas?” he called out. 

There was no answer. Advancing into the room, Jimmy paused. Last time he’d been up here, he’d stubbed his toe on a crate; on his way up here, he’d reminded himself to avoid it. But there was no need—the crate was gone. 

“What the…?”

Plying the flashlight along the narrow aisle between rickety towers of junk, Jimmy spotted the crate—or a similar one, at least—on top of one of the lower piles. The lid was slightly ajar. Someone had _moved_ it. “Thomas,” he said, more confidently, “I know you’re in here.” 

Too bad he didn’t have Sherlock Holmes with him, Jimmy thought. Or a Red Indian brave. They could track Thomas’s footprints in the dust. Jimmy thought about having a go himself, but he could barely make out his own footprints leading from the door, and he knew they were there.

Instead, he said, “You’d better come out. Mr. Carson has the whole house looking for you, and he’s not happy.” Belatedly, Jimmy realized that Mr. Carson’s anger was not precisely an inducement to come out of hiding. “And Mrs. Hughes is worried,” he added. 

There was no response. Advancing into the attic, Jimmy went on, “His lordship’s home, and he brought that Egyptologist bloke with him. They met on the train, so everything’s all right there.” 

There was a rustling in a distant corner, and the sound of something heavy being shoved across the floor, followed by a muffled curse. “Jimmy?” Thomas said.

“Yes?” Jimmy moved toward the source of the sound.

“I’m stuck.” 

He certainly was. The corner from which his voice had emerged was blockaded with an untidy jumble of things, including a cascade of hat boxes, several parasols, and some pieces of rattan furniture.

Thomas’s voice went on, “I think the deer’s antlers got tangled up with the hat rack.” 

And a taxedermied deer’s head. “Yes, all right,” Jimmy said. “Stand back, if you can. We don’t want you getting crushed if this falls over.”

#

It was probably—no, it was _definitely_ —a good thing that Mr. Carson was upstairs serving tea when James reported the success of his search, Elsie thought. With the addition of a layer of grime, Thomas’s appearance was even more pathetic than before, but she suspected Mr. Carson would not have seen it that way. “He was in the attics after all,” James explained. “He’d got trapped behind a pile of boxes and things, somehow.”

“What were you doing up there in the first place?” Elsie asked Thomas, who was studying the floor as though attempting to avoid notice.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Thomas said. “I just was. And then I was stuck. Like James said. So I couldn’t come back down, even though I thought Mr. Carson must be getting angry that I was missing,” he added virtuously. “And I was missing tea.”

Elsie suspected there was more to the story than that, but standing here in the passage was not the place to discuss it. “You had best get cleaned up,” she said instead, “and then we’ll see if Mrs. Patmore has anything left for your tea.” She took Thomas to the scullery and, as she supervised him in washing his hands and face and brushing the worst of the dust from his clothes, she searched for a way to find out if Thomas had, in fact, been fearing that he was about to be given the sack. “We were all rather worried when you disappeared like that,” she said. 

“I didn’t mean to make anyone worry,” Thomas answered.

Perhaps not like that, then. “I’m sure we’ll all be relieved when this is over and things can get back to normal.”

Thomas paused in washing his face. “Do you think they will? Go back to normal?”

“I don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t.”

“The last few days,” Thomas observed, “have not exactly gone well.”

“You’ve not been yourself,” Elsie agreed. “But none of us knew quite how best to handle this situation.” Privately, she thought Mr. Carson’s decision to keep the matter a secret from the ladies had led to most of the trouble, but she didn’t think it right to go quite so far as to say so to Thomas. 

“Suppose not,” Thomas said. 

Elsie pressed on. “I don’t think anyone will hold it against you, the…irregularities. While this has been going on.”

Thomas glanced up at her sharply, for a moment looking his real age. But whatever he’d been about to say was cut off by a knock at the door, and Alfred sticking his head in. “Sorry, Mrs. Hughes. But his lordship and Sir Edmund want to see Thomas, now he’s found.”

“Better get going, then,” Thomas said. 

#

“Goodness,” Lord Grantham said, looking down at Thomas. “What happened here?”

Thomas went very still. Carson had said that his lordship had been fully apprised of the situation; he wouldn’t have let him drag him up here otherwise—no matter what Carson had to say about it. He could have hidden again. 

“I was given to understand you had been brought up to date, my lord,” Carson said. 

“About the curse, yes,” Lord Grantham said. “I was only wondering about the bandage.” 

“Oh,” Thomas said. “That.”

“There was a mishap yesterday,” Carson explained. 

“Another one?” his lordship asked faintly. 

“As you say, my lord. Thomas fell and struck his head. Dr. Clarkson believes there is no reason for alarm.”

“I see. Well. Thomas, I’d like to have a word with you, and then Sir Edmund would like to ask you a few things about the, ah, the _original_ mishap.”

Thomas didn’t like the sound of that at all, but there wasn’t much he could say about it beyond, “Yes, my lord.”

“Carson,” his lordship added.

It took Thomas a moment to realize that Carson was being dismissed; when he did, he looked up and over his shoulder at the butler. He was not exactly accustomed to thinking of Carson as a protector—he’d have much rather had Mrs. Hughes—but he felt that he’d rather have Carson if the alternative was being left on his own with his lordship. 

“We’ve recently discovered, my lord, that it’s unwise to allow Thomas to wander about on his own at present,” Carson said; Thomas was unsure whether to be grateful or not.

“I’ll ring for someone to fetch him when Sir Edmund is finished with him.”

Neither of them could exactly argue with that; Carson took himself out, and Thomas mustered up all the courage at his disposal to keep himself from running after him. 

“Well,” his lordship said when Carson had gone. “I can see it’s been an eventful few days.”

Thomas just nodded, not quite trusting himself to speak. No matter what Mrs. Hughes said, he still didn’t see any way that this conversation was going to come out well for him. 

“First off, I feel I should apologize for any part that my negligence may have played in this…regrettable incident.” 

_What_?

I expect it’s been most upsetting—in fact, I’m quite certain because…well. The figurine was originally one of a pair.”

But it wasn’t anymore? Did that make the one Thomas had broken more valuable, or less?

“The other one carried a similar curse—if not an identical one; Sir Edmund is still comparing them. In hindsight, I ought to have disposed of the remaining one, or at least not left it on display. The Egyptologist who was summoned to deal with the previous…mishap…said that the second one was not cursed, but clearly he was…mistaken.”

Thomas essayed a cautious nod, which made his head throb. 

His lordship went on, “Reversing the curse should be straightforward enough—at least, it was with the other one. I don’t remember the details, but I’m confident Sir Edmund will be able to re-create the procedure.”

“That’s good to hear, my lord,” Thomas said. It took care of one of his worries, at least. 

“And as for….” Alarmingly, his lordship trailed off. It seemed, to Thomas, that it could have been a lead-in to discussion of any of his misdeeds of the past few days. But when Grantham spoke again, he said something quite unexpected. “I know better than anyone how disconcerting a transformation like this can be.”

Thomas spoke without thinking as the realization of what his lordship was saying came over him. “ _You—_ ”

“Yes,” Grantham said sharply. “And I’m sure you understand why I don’t like to speak of it.”

That, Thomas did. “Yes, my lord,” he said meekly.

“Yes. So. Once this is all over, we’ll say no more about it.”

For a second, Thomas nearly mistook that for an invitation to ask his many, many questions about Lord Grantham’s experience, but realized just in time that his lordship was saying that everything he’d done over the last few days was going to be swept under the carpet. “Yes, my lord. Thank you, my lord.”

“All right. Let’s see what Sir Edmund has to say.”

#

Robert kept a close eye on Thomas as Sir Edmund questioned him about the mishap. He’d heard a great deal from Bates, Cora, and Carson about Thomas’s extraordinary behavior of the past few days, and was determined to find a way to whisk him away if he seemed on the point of embarrassing himself again—it seemed the least Robert could do.

But Thomas seemed to be handling himself well enough, for the moment. Robert remembered that, how at times it was possible to pull oneself together—but the effort tended to leave a debt that had to be paid at one time or another. 

“Now,” Sir Edmund said. “Did you _say_ anything when you dropped the figurine?”

“I may have done,” Thomas answered evasively.

“What did you say?”

“I may have, er, sworn a bit? But not one of the really bad ones. And no one else was around,” he explained quickly.

Robert thought, on balance, he could have done without this glimpse into the way Barrow’s mind worked. “Yes,” he said quickly. “I’m sure that can’t matter very much, can it, Sir Edmund?”

“In fact, it may,” Sir Edmund said. “I’ve made a most fascinating discovery.”

“Have you?” Robert asked, concealing his trepidation. He suspected that Sir Edmund’s priorities in this matter were not a precise match for his own. 

“Yes. It seems that Professor Waterston was quite correct when he determined that the remaining figurine was not cursed. The first one wasn’t, either.”

Robert glanced down at Thomas, who looked as incredulous as Robert himself felt. “I beg to differ.”

“This transformation was intended as a _blessing_ ,” Sir Edmund explained. “An opportunity to recapture the joys of childhood.”

Good God. What _would_ these foreigners come up with? 

“This pair appears to have been given as a gift to mark a significant anniversary of the recipient’s passage into manhood. The blessings were to be activated by smashing the figurine and invoking the name of Baast—as their goddess of the moon, she has power over transformations, you see. But apparently the original recipient chose not to use them, for some reason.”

“I find it difficult to blame him,” Robert noted. “Curse, blessing, or whatever it is, it _is_ reversible?”

“Oh, yes,” Sir Edmund said. “The necessary ritual is explained here. It must be done at moonrise, which—” He glanced at his watch. “—doesn’t give me enough time to finish translating the text and prepare the necessary supplies, but tomorrow should do well enough.”

“Good,” Robert said, glancing down at Thomas. 

“Very good, sir,” Thomas echoed.

#

Before Sir Edmund could get into the details of the ritual for reversing the curse—and it _was_ a curse, no matter what the Egyptologist said—his lordship rang for Mrs. Hughes to come take Thomas away. Thomas wasn’t sure whether to be offended or relieved by that. He _did_ want to hear all about the ritual, but on the other hand, he still hadn’t had his tea. And so far he hadn’t done anything too terrible in front of Lord Grantham, so maybe it was just as well he was going back downstairs before that could change. 

“Ah. You’re finished with him, then?” Mrs. Hughes asked.

“Yes,” said his lordship. “Sir Edmund will be conducting the reversal tomorrow evening. I trust it won’t be too much trouble to look after Thomas until then.”

“I’m sure we’ll manage,” Mrs. Hughes said, taking his hand.

Thomas, very conscious that he was meant to be on his best behavior, did not protest this indignity.

(end this scene somehow)

#

Jimmy was undressing—and mentally cursing all butlers, under-butlers, Egyptian cats, and other circumstances that came together to prevent him from attending the village dance—when the door to his room creaked open. 

_Just what I needed_. “Thomas, what are you doing in here?” Cursed into childhood or not, he ought to have known better than to turn up in Jimmy’s room in the middle of the night. 

“I can’t sleep,” Thomas explained, rubbing his eyes. 

“What do you want me to do about it?” Jimmy asked. “Tell you a bedtime story?”

Thomas blinked up at him. “All right,” he said, exactly as though the sarcasm had gone completely over his head, and climbed up into Jimmy’s bed, sitting against the headboard and looking expectant. 

“Oh, for—” Jimmy decided it wasn’t wise to finish that sentence in front of either a six-year-old or his immediate superior in the hierarchy of the house—whichever he was meant to take Thomas for right now. 

Thomas knew who he was, and remembered what had gone between them—he’d made that clear the other night, when Carson made Jimmy put him to bed. So what was he playing at now?

He must be taking the piss, Jimmy decided, and two could play at that game. “Fine,” he said sharply. Sitting down at the opposite end of his bed, he began, “Once upon a time there was a handsome prince—oof.” Thomas had slithered down to shove himself up against Jimmy’s side. “Have you gone completely mental?” he demanded.

“Handsome prince,” Thomas prompted.

“A handsome, heroic prince,” Jimmy said. “Who everyone in the castle liked. Except there was also a slimy old…wizard, who was always following him around. And coming into his bedroom uninvited.”

Thomas pulled away and looked up at him with big eyes and an expression of betrayal. “I don’t think I like this story,” he said, his voice quavering a little.

Belatedly, it occurred to Jimmy that Thomas just might not be taking the piss after all. And if he wasn’t, then the “story” Jimmy had started telling him was sort of…mean. So he quickly said, “No, it’s all right. Because, uh, eventually it turned out that the wizard wasn’t so bad and they were friends.” Then Jimmy nattered on about the prince and the wizard fighting a dragon. 

By the time he finished, Thomas was fast asleep. With a sigh, Jimmy shifted Thomas out of his lap, tugged the blankets up over him, and went to sleep in the under-butler’s room.

#

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> As far as I can remember, the ending of the story was going to be something about the rest of the downstairs crew learning something about Thomas's vulnerabilities and showing him some support, after which he is transformed back into an adult.


End file.
